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End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration
“Peter Turchin brings science to history. Some like it and some prefer their history plain. But everyone needs to pay attention to the well-informed, convincing and terrifying analysis in this book.” —Angus Deaton, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics
From the pioneering co-founder of cliodynamics, the groundbreaking new interdisciplinary science of history, a big-picture explanation for America's civil strife and its possible endgames
Peter Turchin, one of the most interesting social scientists of our age, has infused the study of history with approaches and insights from other fields for more than a quarter century. End Times is the culmination of his work to understand what causes political communities to cohere and what causes them to fall apart, as applied to the current turmoil within the United States.
Back in 2010, when Nature magazine asked leading scientists to provide a ten-year forecast, Turchin used his models to predict that America was in a spiral of social disintegration that would lead to a breakdown in the political order circa 2020. The years since have proved his prediction more and more accurate, and End Times reveals why.
The lessons of world history are clear, Turchin When the equilibrium between ruling elites and the majority tips too far in favor of elites, political instability is all but inevitable. As income inequality surges and prosperity flows disproportionately into the hands of the elites, the common people suffer, and society-wide efforts to become an elite grow ever more frenzied. He calls this process the wealth pump; it’s a world of the damned and the saved. And since the number of such positions remains relatively fixed, the overproduction of elites inevitably leads to frustrated elite aspirants, who harness popular resentment to turn against the established order. Turchin’s models show that when this state has been reached, societies become locked in a death spiral it's very hard to exit.
In America, the wealth pump has been operating full blast for two generations. As cliodynamics shows us, our current cycle of elite overproduction and popular immiseration is far along the path to violent political rupture. That is only one possible end time, and the choice is up to us, but the hour grows late.
From the pioneering co-founder of cliodynamics, the groundbreaking new interdisciplinary science of history, a big-picture explanation for America's civil strife and its possible endgames
Peter Turchin, one of the most interesting social scientists of our age, has infused the study of history with approaches and insights from other fields for more than a quarter century. End Times is the culmination of his work to understand what causes political communities to cohere and what causes them to fall apart, as applied to the current turmoil within the United States.
Back in 2010, when Nature magazine asked leading scientists to provide a ten-year forecast, Turchin used his models to predict that America was in a spiral of social disintegration that would lead to a breakdown in the political order circa 2020. The years since have proved his prediction more and more accurate, and End Times reveals why.
The lessons of world history are clear, Turchin When the equilibrium between ruling elites and the majority tips too far in favor of elites, political instability is all but inevitable. As income inequality surges and prosperity flows disproportionately into the hands of the elites, the common people suffer, and society-wide efforts to become an elite grow ever more frenzied. He calls this process the wealth pump; it’s a world of the damned and the saved. And since the number of such positions remains relatively fixed, the overproduction of elites inevitably leads to frustrated elite aspirants, who harness popular resentment to turn against the established order. Turchin’s models show that when this state has been reached, societies become locked in a death spiral it's very hard to exit.
In America, the wealth pump has been operating full blast for two generations. As cliodynamics shows us, our current cycle of elite overproduction and popular immiseration is far along the path to violent political rupture. That is only one possible end time, and the choice is up to us, but the hour grows late.
368 pages, Hardcover
Published June 13, 2023
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May 30, 2023
It is fashionable to talk of the 2020s as a time of upset, instability, turmoil, revolution and war, all without any factual basis, just gut feeling. What is really shocking is that science and math show that it is all true. In End Times, Peter Turchin describes how countries come to this point predictably, and how all of it can always be traced to two factors: elite overproduction, and the concomitant immiseration of the 99%. In the regular cycle, the time for overturning everything is now.
This is quite possibly the most important book of the decade, and affects absolutely everyone. It explains precisely where we are and where we’re heading, based on thousands of years of the same cycles. Unfortunately for the USA, this knowledge comes too late.
To make a long, detailed, involved and complex story short, as the rich grow their families, their children want power and money. They take it from the poor, in low wages, low taxes on capital, removal of rights, reductions in aid, and increases in incarceration and fines (the “wealth pump”). They achieve their goals through a direct line to power, bypassing normal channels. As the poor get poorer and the rich get richer and more numerous, protests begin. They are chaotic, leaderless and without clear goals. They evolve into bloodletting, literal or physical, which ultimately greatly reduces the number of the elite. Basic wages go up as fewer workers survive and are available, and equality reaches a high point.
And the cycle begins again.
The Chinese have seen this cycle endlessly: “The empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide. Thus it has ever been.” But Turchin can say this definitively because of a giant database called CrisisDB. It goes back thousands of years, through all kinds of societies and nations. And everywhere he researches, it is the overproduction of elites that strains the system. And causes its demise.
It has long been proclaimed that human society, being composed of individual humans, is far too complex for any kind of model to operate consistently and successfully. But the data say that in high level, general sweeps, patterns and waves occur regularly and predictably. The differences make no difference.
With war, the generation of the war cries loudly – Never again! The next generation enjoys some level of peace, but by the third generation, all is forgotten. People are emboldened again, and ready for the “glory” of another war.
So with politics. Equality reigns for a couple of decades, then distortions begin to appear. Larger numbers of people become fabulously rich, and all their circle want to have their say in power. There aren’t enough positions in government or influence for them, so they become frustrated and embittered. The demands of the rich flood the halls of government. They fund radical candidates, arrange for removals and assassinations, and in general, darken the outlook. Laws begin to dramatically favor the rich at everyone else’s cost.
The 99% become outcasts (flyover country, deplorables, welfare queens, poor, homeless). They look back at their parents, who had decent jobs, decent pay and decent households, and wonder how and why all that went away.
This is exactly what Donald Trump tapped into, even though he clearly had no desire to change any of it. His actions enriched the richest, and his plans were to further impoverish the poor, but his words were to Make America Great Again. That appeal rang truer than anything today’s 99% had ever heard, and they bought into it, hook, line and sinker. But Trump was never going to be the solution. He would only speed up the process to disaster.
Wages had been going down since the 1970s. Unions were shoved out of action. Universities became laughably unaffordable. So did housing. Even life expectancy dropped. Child labor laws are being softened to help suppress minimum wages. This is exactly the configuration of pretty much every civil war and revolution: the rich want their power, and the rest want decent conditions. Something has to give. And it is usually the floor, not the ceiling.
That the lot of the 99% has not and will not improve fits totally into Turchin’s research. Unless someone comes to their aid and reduces the glaring inequality, governments will fall, constitutions will be tossed, domestic terrorism will increase, and civil wars will break out. And elites will light the match. In this decade. The Chinese knew it. So did Tsars Alexander II and III. Yet we keep falling into the same trap.
Turchin has been working at this a long time. His team has built a remarkable dataset. It extends to the point of revealing that:
-When societies are in equilibrium, human height is measurably increased. Americans were the tallest in the world in the 1700s. And before a civil war, people don’t grow nearly as tall; they actually, measurably shrink. It is plain for all to see.
-Life expectancy changes as the cycle approaches the chaos stage. He says American life expectancy has never fallen three years in a row since the Great Depression of 1933. But it has just done so. And Covid-19 is far from exceptional. Major epidemics “are often associated” with these periods.
-“Nearly half of the millionaires who thrived during the Roaring Twenties were wiped out by the Great Depression and the following decades, when worker wages grew faster than GDP per capita.” It was the greatest leveling ever seen in the USA.
-“In one-sixth of the (global) cases, elite groups were targeted for extermination. The probability of ruler assassination was 40 percent. Bad news for the elites. Even more bad news for everybody was that 75 percent of crises ended in revolutions or civil wars (or both), and in one-fifth of cases, recurrent civil wars dragged on for a century or longer. Sixty percent of exits led to the death of the state –it was conquered by another or simply disintegrated into fragments.”
-The “CrisisDB confirms that rise-and-fall cycles in societies with polygamous elites are substantially shorter than such cycles in monogamous societies.” In English – nuclear families produce fewer children, delaying the inevitable competition for power.
In other words, the data has a lot more to tell us than we even know to ask. This is a whole new way to look at the world.
It happens the same way all over and throughout history. Turchin examines not just the US, as it approaches this low point right now, but also England at several points, France, Russia, the Roman Empire and China, which has the longest record of it.
The commonalities occur at every stage. When the cycle is fresh and people are equal, they co-operate. The common good is an important value to them. But as the rich grow in numbers and in wealth, and pull away from the pack, “the sense of national cooperation with which states quickly rot from within” takes over, Turchin says. This is as precise a summation of the US today as I have seen. It is shockingly true. People begin to fear and hate institutions. They want to seal the borders to keep what little is left for themselves.
Turchin points out that it is the ruling class that wants open borders. They mean more competition for jobs, so lower wages and more government aid programs they can manage for profit. He cites Bernie Sanders saying open borders is “a Koch idea” and nothing he supports. But the ruling class always gets its way – until the end. It has been decades since voters had any real say in government. Legislators bow to rich donors. Voters only count during elections, not in legislatures. A billionaire has purchased himself a Supreme Court justice. The rot has become glaringly visible.
It is the ruling class that scares off equalizing legislation, by say, calling inheritance taxes a death tax, even though it only applies to them and not the 99%. They are also behind denying climate change, calling it a hoax, in order to deflect attention from the ever increasing rates of fossil fuel consumption. In this environment, “money is free speech” Turchin says. Let there be no doubt who is leading everyone down the path to self-destruction. For Turchin, the “wealth pump is one of the most destabilizing social mechanisms known to humanity.” And unfortunately, “it is too late to avert our current crisis.”
Elite overproduction has taken many forms. In many cases, it was military. The rich sent their children to the armed forces, to serve as admirals and generals. In religious societies, they became cardinals and high priests. Under royalty, they became governors, given stipends and pensions for life. Today, they are CEOs and kingmakers, buying elections to get pliable officials who will increase their wealth. In China, Turchin says, for two thousand years it was the educated. They had to take difficult civil service exams to get into government. To fail the exam meant a peasant’s life. Today, the Communist Party of China still operates this same way. If the Chinese can’t get into the party and pass the tests, they are doomed to have zero power or respect.
And in all these cases, when there are more candidates than positions (Musical Chairs, Turchin calls it), there will be unrest among the elite. And it is the elites who will undermine the system before the 99% get organized. In Turchin’s terms: “The most important driver is intraelite competition and conflict, which is a reliable predictor of the looming crisis.” Today’s clue is rich parents bribing school officials to get their (apparently unworthy) children into top universities.
But even that is no guarantee of success, as newly minted lawyers find they begin with a quarter of a million in debt and few prospects to rise to the top in an overstuffed industry.
The civil service figures in another way as well. Smaller societies are not subject to the same cycle, because they might not have an administration, “but once you have a million or more subjects, you either acquire a civil service or suffer from such inefficiencies that your polity sooner or later collapses. Or loses in competition with bureaucratic empires.” Overpopulation has essentially eliminated that marker, making it merely an interesting footnote.
As I read, my own warped mind kept sliding way out of scope of this book, to ecology. Because just when we’re beginning to understand what needs to be done to save the human race and its ecosphere, civil wars and wartime governments will have no time, no inclination and no money to deal with trivia like climate change. Power itself will be at stake. The 2020s could be the final nail in more than one coffin.
In an appendix, Turchin salutes Isaac Asimov, whose 1960s era Foundation trilogy centered around “psycho-history”, the science fiction notion that the whole galaxy operates on a clear cyclical pattern of governance and inevitability (Turchin calls the real thing “cliodynamics”). Would that Asimov were around today to reflect on that as actually true.
End Times is a six star book, not because of the writing style, which is friendly but a little flabby, but because Turchin pulls together a vast jigsaw puzzle and changes the face of history with it. It is dramatic. Every page is a revelation. Dots are connected. Questions are answered. Relevance gets established where no real importance had been noted before. It is important because it determines, reveals and reinforces a universal truth: it is the lack of governance over the rich that causes all the cyclicality of society. Instability, turmoil and wars can be seen as failure to control the elites from their corrupting influence in society after society, era after era. That is a significant step in our understanding of history and ourselves.
This is a whole new way to see how the human world works. And we should be embarrassed that we didn’t realize it a lot sooner. Because we’re about to pay the price. Again.
David Wineberg
(End Times, Peter Turchin, June 2023)
If you liked this review, I invite you to read more in my book The Straight Dope. It’s an essay collection based on my first thousand reviews and what I learned. Right now it’s FREE for Prime members, otherwise — cheap! Reputed to be fascinating and a superfast read. And you already know it is well-written. https://www.amazon.com/Straight-Dope-...
This is quite possibly the most important book of the decade, and affects absolutely everyone. It explains precisely where we are and where we’re heading, based on thousands of years of the same cycles. Unfortunately for the USA, this knowledge comes too late.
To make a long, detailed, involved and complex story short, as the rich grow their families, their children want power and money. They take it from the poor, in low wages, low taxes on capital, removal of rights, reductions in aid, and increases in incarceration and fines (the “wealth pump”). They achieve their goals through a direct line to power, bypassing normal channels. As the poor get poorer and the rich get richer and more numerous, protests begin. They are chaotic, leaderless and without clear goals. They evolve into bloodletting, literal or physical, which ultimately greatly reduces the number of the elite. Basic wages go up as fewer workers survive and are available, and equality reaches a high point.
And the cycle begins again.
The Chinese have seen this cycle endlessly: “The empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide. Thus it has ever been.” But Turchin can say this definitively because of a giant database called CrisisDB. It goes back thousands of years, through all kinds of societies and nations. And everywhere he researches, it is the overproduction of elites that strains the system. And causes its demise.
It has long been proclaimed that human society, being composed of individual humans, is far too complex for any kind of model to operate consistently and successfully. But the data say that in high level, general sweeps, patterns and waves occur regularly and predictably. The differences make no difference.
With war, the generation of the war cries loudly – Never again! The next generation enjoys some level of peace, but by the third generation, all is forgotten. People are emboldened again, and ready for the “glory” of another war.
So with politics. Equality reigns for a couple of decades, then distortions begin to appear. Larger numbers of people become fabulously rich, and all their circle want to have their say in power. There aren’t enough positions in government or influence for them, so they become frustrated and embittered. The demands of the rich flood the halls of government. They fund radical candidates, arrange for removals and assassinations, and in general, darken the outlook. Laws begin to dramatically favor the rich at everyone else’s cost.
The 99% become outcasts (flyover country, deplorables, welfare queens, poor, homeless). They look back at their parents, who had decent jobs, decent pay and decent households, and wonder how and why all that went away.
This is exactly what Donald Trump tapped into, even though he clearly had no desire to change any of it. His actions enriched the richest, and his plans were to further impoverish the poor, but his words were to Make America Great Again. That appeal rang truer than anything today’s 99% had ever heard, and they bought into it, hook, line and sinker. But Trump was never going to be the solution. He would only speed up the process to disaster.
Wages had been going down since the 1970s. Unions were shoved out of action. Universities became laughably unaffordable. So did housing. Even life expectancy dropped. Child labor laws are being softened to help suppress minimum wages. This is exactly the configuration of pretty much every civil war and revolution: the rich want their power, and the rest want decent conditions. Something has to give. And it is usually the floor, not the ceiling.
That the lot of the 99% has not and will not improve fits totally into Turchin’s research. Unless someone comes to their aid and reduces the glaring inequality, governments will fall, constitutions will be tossed, domestic terrorism will increase, and civil wars will break out. And elites will light the match. In this decade. The Chinese knew it. So did Tsars Alexander II and III. Yet we keep falling into the same trap.
Turchin has been working at this a long time. His team has built a remarkable dataset. It extends to the point of revealing that:
-When societies are in equilibrium, human height is measurably increased. Americans were the tallest in the world in the 1700s. And before a civil war, people don’t grow nearly as tall; they actually, measurably shrink. It is plain for all to see.
-Life expectancy changes as the cycle approaches the chaos stage. He says American life expectancy has never fallen three years in a row since the Great Depression of 1933. But it has just done so. And Covid-19 is far from exceptional. Major epidemics “are often associated” with these periods.
-“Nearly half of the millionaires who thrived during the Roaring Twenties were wiped out by the Great Depression and the following decades, when worker wages grew faster than GDP per capita.” It was the greatest leveling ever seen in the USA.
-“In one-sixth of the (global) cases, elite groups were targeted for extermination. The probability of ruler assassination was 40 percent. Bad news for the elites. Even more bad news for everybody was that 75 percent of crises ended in revolutions or civil wars (or both), and in one-fifth of cases, recurrent civil wars dragged on for a century or longer. Sixty percent of exits led to the death of the state –it was conquered by another or simply disintegrated into fragments.”
-The “CrisisDB confirms that rise-and-fall cycles in societies with polygamous elites are substantially shorter than such cycles in monogamous societies.” In English – nuclear families produce fewer children, delaying the inevitable competition for power.
In other words, the data has a lot more to tell us than we even know to ask. This is a whole new way to look at the world.
It happens the same way all over and throughout history. Turchin examines not just the US, as it approaches this low point right now, but also England at several points, France, Russia, the Roman Empire and China, which has the longest record of it.
The commonalities occur at every stage. When the cycle is fresh and people are equal, they co-operate. The common good is an important value to them. But as the rich grow in numbers and in wealth, and pull away from the pack, “the sense of national cooperation with which states quickly rot from within” takes over, Turchin says. This is as precise a summation of the US today as I have seen. It is shockingly true. People begin to fear and hate institutions. They want to seal the borders to keep what little is left for themselves.
Turchin points out that it is the ruling class that wants open borders. They mean more competition for jobs, so lower wages and more government aid programs they can manage for profit. He cites Bernie Sanders saying open borders is “a Koch idea” and nothing he supports. But the ruling class always gets its way – until the end. It has been decades since voters had any real say in government. Legislators bow to rich donors. Voters only count during elections, not in legislatures. A billionaire has purchased himself a Supreme Court justice. The rot has become glaringly visible.
It is the ruling class that scares off equalizing legislation, by say, calling inheritance taxes a death tax, even though it only applies to them and not the 99%. They are also behind denying climate change, calling it a hoax, in order to deflect attention from the ever increasing rates of fossil fuel consumption. In this environment, “money is free speech” Turchin says. Let there be no doubt who is leading everyone down the path to self-destruction. For Turchin, the “wealth pump is one of the most destabilizing social mechanisms known to humanity.” And unfortunately, “it is too late to avert our current crisis.”
Elite overproduction has taken many forms. In many cases, it was military. The rich sent their children to the armed forces, to serve as admirals and generals. In religious societies, they became cardinals and high priests. Under royalty, they became governors, given stipends and pensions for life. Today, they are CEOs and kingmakers, buying elections to get pliable officials who will increase their wealth. In China, Turchin says, for two thousand years it was the educated. They had to take difficult civil service exams to get into government. To fail the exam meant a peasant’s life. Today, the Communist Party of China still operates this same way. If the Chinese can’t get into the party and pass the tests, they are doomed to have zero power or respect.
And in all these cases, when there are more candidates than positions (Musical Chairs, Turchin calls it), there will be unrest among the elite. And it is the elites who will undermine the system before the 99% get organized. In Turchin’s terms: “The most important driver is intraelite competition and conflict, which is a reliable predictor of the looming crisis.” Today’s clue is rich parents bribing school officials to get their (apparently unworthy) children into top universities.
But even that is no guarantee of success, as newly minted lawyers find they begin with a quarter of a million in debt and few prospects to rise to the top in an overstuffed industry.
The civil service figures in another way as well. Smaller societies are not subject to the same cycle, because they might not have an administration, “but once you have a million or more subjects, you either acquire a civil service or suffer from such inefficiencies that your polity sooner or later collapses. Or loses in competition with bureaucratic empires.” Overpopulation has essentially eliminated that marker, making it merely an interesting footnote.
As I read, my own warped mind kept sliding way out of scope of this book, to ecology. Because just when we’re beginning to understand what needs to be done to save the human race and its ecosphere, civil wars and wartime governments will have no time, no inclination and no money to deal with trivia like climate change. Power itself will be at stake. The 2020s could be the final nail in more than one coffin.
In an appendix, Turchin salutes Isaac Asimov, whose 1960s era Foundation trilogy centered around “psycho-history”, the science fiction notion that the whole galaxy operates on a clear cyclical pattern of governance and inevitability (Turchin calls the real thing “cliodynamics”). Would that Asimov were around today to reflect on that as actually true.
End Times is a six star book, not because of the writing style, which is friendly but a little flabby, but because Turchin pulls together a vast jigsaw puzzle and changes the face of history with it. It is dramatic. Every page is a revelation. Dots are connected. Questions are answered. Relevance gets established where no real importance had been noted before. It is important because it determines, reveals and reinforces a universal truth: it is the lack of governance over the rich that causes all the cyclicality of society. Instability, turmoil and wars can be seen as failure to control the elites from their corrupting influence in society after society, era after era. That is a significant step in our understanding of history and ourselves.
This is a whole new way to see how the human world works. And we should be embarrassed that we didn’t realize it a lot sooner. Because we’re about to pay the price. Again.
David Wineberg
(End Times, Peter Turchin, June 2023)
If you liked this review, I invite you to read more in my book The Straight Dope. It’s an essay collection based on my first thousand reviews and what I learned. Right now it’s FREE for Prime members, otherwise — cheap! Reputed to be fascinating and a superfast read. And you already know it is well-written. https://www.amazon.com/Straight-Dope-...
January 6, 2025
I've been thinking a lot about Turchin's concept of "elite overproduction" since reading this book. This is the idea that societies on the verge of mass upheaval first produce a surplus of ambitious, often wealthy, always college-educated elites, and those strivers who do not find their respected place at the top of society - due to the excess production of such elites, there's only room for so many - become both a symptom of a society on the path of political disintegration and often the change agents (counter-elites) who launch assaults on that society. The most obvious example being the French Revolution and its counter-elite leaders such as the lawyer Robespierre and the journalist Marat.
The root of "the path of political disintegration" is, per Turchin's hypothesis, that population pressure causes increased warfare. That warfare can take many forms before the spilling of blood. But blood spilled, and societal breakdown, is where that path ends. And then it starts all over again. This is cyclical...
Elite overproduction occurs across all societies and throughout history. David Wineberg, in his excellent Goodreads review, summarizes it well:
The concept of elite overproduction is just one of many that Turchin juggles in this compelling and very readable book. The author has a lively and warm writing style, which helps make his complex topics easy to digest. He is perhaps most (in)famous for his successful 2010 prediction of the worldwide mayhem that occurred in 2020. Turchin comes to his conclusions via "cliodynamics" which, per Wikipedia, is a transdisciplinary area of research that integrates cultural evolution, economic history/cliometrics, macrosociology, the mathematical modeling of historical processes during the longue durée, and the construction and analysis of historical databases. This is an area of research that the author actually co-founded. Readers of classic science fiction should immediately recognize cliodynamics as reminiscent of Asimov's "psychohistory" from his Foundation series; Turchin explores this connection in one of the appendices.
Despite still doubting that the U.S. is on the brink of civil war (although I loved the movie lol), this book was illuminating and thought-provoking in many ways. Its analysis of class warfare throughout history was particularly compelling. End Times really fired up my brain synapses. 5 stars!
💥⚔️📢
Notes
- page 30: There are four structural drivers of instability: (1) popular immiseration (economic impoverishment), (2) elite overproduction resulting in intra-elite conflict, (3) failing fiscal health and weakened legitimacy of the state, and (4) various geopolitical factors e.g. climate, disease, the games of thrones occurring in other countries, all of which have impact on the country in question.
- page 40: Elites most often produce more elites; the more they reproduce, the more elites there are. In Islamic societies that allow polygamy, the increase of elite overproduction is therefore multiplied. And so the cycles between periods of stability and instability in these countries are shorter, due to the correspondingly faster creation of a surplus of elites.
- page 47: "Dynamic Entrainment" is when out of sync movements eventually become synchronized. This can be considered on a societal level as well, when a movement or wave of instability hits or triggers multiple societies at once. Perhaps the Arab Spring could be considered as such. But in the book, Turchin is speaking more about climate fluctuations and contagion; from page 50: "...societies approaching a crisis are very likely to be hit by an epidemic. But the causality also flows in the opposite direction. A major epidemic undermines societal stability. Because the poor suffer greater mortality than the elites, the social pyramids become top-heavy."
- page 95: Cliodynamics integrates all important forces of history: demographic, economic, social, cultural, ideological. This can be challenging for the social scientist when ideology has become weaponized by rival elite factions.
- page 124: It is obvious that America is a plutocracy. We are dominated by corporate, plutocratic entities and superstructures: the military-industrial complex, the FIRE (finance, insurance, and real estate) sector, the energy sector, Silicon Valley, Big Food, Big Pharma, the medical-industrial complex, the education-industrial complex. "In 2021, twelve thousand lobbyists spent $3.7 billion influencing policy at the federal level."
- page 134: A continuing influx of immigrants allows for the depression of worker wages and an increase on elite returns on capital. Unrestricted immigration is an example of a "wealth pump" - a mechanism that transfers capital from the poor to the rich, resulting in an unequal distribution of resources; the rich use the wealth pump to enrich themselves through policy implementation.
- page 142: A potential rival to our system of plutocracy is the Nordic model, which involves tripartite cooperation between labor, business, and government working together for the common good. The U.S. attempted to walk this path via the New Deal and other reforms adopted during the Progressive Era. A key reason we diverged from this path is due to race. As any decent class/economics-centered progressive knows, racialized identity politics are a very successful tool to encourage divisions between the working class. Turchin's primary example here is the "Southern strategy" used by Goldwater, Nixon, and Reagan.
- page 156: Wealthy liberals often undermine the pillars of society through such politically schizophrenic actions as, on the one hand, supporting politicians who run on lowering taxes, and on the other hand, funding radical-left causes that deepen societal polarization.
- page 175: The Soviet Union was basically a giant corporation in which the state owned the wealth-producing assets. After its collapse, in Russia the economic elites (the oligarchs) seized control, and so became a plutocracy. Under Putin, the administrative and military elites took control, and so modern Russia has returned to being an autocracy along the lines of Imperial Russia. This is a familiar pattern for this country. Turchin makes a point that "political culture tends to be resilient and usually reconstructs itself." This point also explains the differences in both Ukraine and Belarus to Russia. In the former, the economic elites turned on each other; in the latter, the administrative-military elites stayed strong. Another point, on page 180: "All complex societies are vulnerable to the disintegrative forces of elite overproduction, which is why they all experience periodic social breakdowns. But plutocracies... are particularly vulnerable."
- page 202: Turchin on the idea of a civil war (which he acknowledges may strike some as unrealistic): "...to bring the system to a positive equilibrium, the [wealth] pump must be shut down. We can model this by driving the relative wage up to the point where upward and downward rates of mobility between commoners and elites are balanced... [however,] Shutting down the pump reduces elite incomes, but it does not decrease their numbers. This is a recipe for converting a massive proportion of the elites into counter-elites, which most likely make the internal war even bloodier and more intense. However, after a painful and violent decade, the system will rapidly achieve equilibrium... the proportion of the population that is radicalized will fall, and the surplus elites will be eliminated... The end result will be a 'sharp short-term pain, long-term gain' outcome."
- It is well-known that in the U.S., wealth concentration is within 1% of our population. In contrast to that tiny percentage, in Germany, Austria, and France, wealth concentration is within 10% of their populations; in Denmark, it is 13%. We can look for no support from either major political party in addressing this disparity. Per page 237: "the Democratic Party, a party of the working class during the New Deal, became by 2000 the party of the credentialed 10 percent. The rival party, the Republican Party, primarily served the wealthy 1 percent, leaving the 90 percent out in the cold." I do wonder what Turchin makes of the current MAGA GOP and its army of populists. MAGA also includes a high number of counter-elites. Both groups having recently came out to play during the H-1B debate. 🤔 We do live in interesting times!
Turchin's ideas have received sharp criticism from some fellow social scientists. The center-left Yascha Mounk recently published a piece entitled "There Is No Surplus Elite in America". Similarly, the classical liberal Francis Fukuyama basically hand-waved Turchin aside in a dismissive review of this book for The New York Times. Both are writers that I admire; their thoughts on Turchin's pronouncements are well-worth seeking out. Keep in mind though that both gentlemen are decidedly elites - although within the credentialed 10% rather than the ultra-wealthy 1%. I'm just saying: they certainly have skin in this game!
💰💸🤑
original placeholder 'review':
seems apropos that I finished this excellent book on Election Day. maybe a bit on the nose though? anyway, review to come. time now to order some pizza, fix myself a whisky, turn on the tv, and actively make sure not to get hysterical or deranged. wish me luck LOL
The root of "the path of political disintegration" is, per Turchin's hypothesis, that population pressure causes increased warfare. That warfare can take many forms before the spilling of blood. But blood spilled, and societal breakdown, is where that path ends. And then it starts all over again. This is cyclical...
Elite overproduction occurs across all societies and throughout history. David Wineberg, in his excellent Goodreads review, summarizes it well:
The concept of elite overproduction is just one of many that Turchin juggles in this compelling and very readable book. The author has a lively and warm writing style, which helps make his complex topics easy to digest. He is perhaps most (in)famous for his successful 2010 prediction of the worldwide mayhem that occurred in 2020. Turchin comes to his conclusions via "cliodynamics" which, per Wikipedia, is a transdisciplinary area of research that integrates cultural evolution, economic history/cliometrics, macrosociology, the mathematical modeling of historical processes during the longue durée, and the construction and analysis of historical databases. This is an area of research that the author actually co-founded. Readers of classic science fiction should immediately recognize cliodynamics as reminiscent of Asimov's "psychohistory" from his Foundation series; Turchin explores this connection in one of the appendices.
Despite still doubting that the U.S. is on the brink of civil war (although I loved the movie lol), this book was illuminating and thought-provoking in many ways. Its analysis of class warfare throughout history was particularly compelling. End Times really fired up my brain synapses. 5 stars!
💥⚔️📢
Notes
- page 30: There are four structural drivers of instability: (1) popular immiseration (economic impoverishment), (2) elite overproduction resulting in intra-elite conflict, (3) failing fiscal health and weakened legitimacy of the state, and (4) various geopolitical factors e.g. climate, disease, the games of thrones occurring in other countries, all of which have impact on the country in question.
- page 40: Elites most often produce more elites; the more they reproduce, the more elites there are. In Islamic societies that allow polygamy, the increase of elite overproduction is therefore multiplied. And so the cycles between periods of stability and instability in these countries are shorter, due to the correspondingly faster creation of a surplus of elites.
- page 47: "Dynamic Entrainment" is when out of sync movements eventually become synchronized. This can be considered on a societal level as well, when a movement or wave of instability hits or triggers multiple societies at once. Perhaps the Arab Spring could be considered as such. But in the book, Turchin is speaking more about climate fluctuations and contagion; from page 50: "...societies approaching a crisis are very likely to be hit by an epidemic. But the causality also flows in the opposite direction. A major epidemic undermines societal stability. Because the poor suffer greater mortality than the elites, the social pyramids become top-heavy."
- page 95: Cliodynamics integrates all important forces of history: demographic, economic, social, cultural, ideological. This can be challenging for the social scientist when ideology has become weaponized by rival elite factions.
- page 124: It is obvious that America is a plutocracy. We are dominated by corporate, plutocratic entities and superstructures: the military-industrial complex, the FIRE (finance, insurance, and real estate) sector, the energy sector, Silicon Valley, Big Food, Big Pharma, the medical-industrial complex, the education-industrial complex. "In 2021, twelve thousand lobbyists spent $3.7 billion influencing policy at the federal level."
- page 134: A continuing influx of immigrants allows for the depression of worker wages and an increase on elite returns on capital. Unrestricted immigration is an example of a "wealth pump" - a mechanism that transfers capital from the poor to the rich, resulting in an unequal distribution of resources; the rich use the wealth pump to enrich themselves through policy implementation.
- page 142: A potential rival to our system of plutocracy is the Nordic model, which involves tripartite cooperation between labor, business, and government working together for the common good. The U.S. attempted to walk this path via the New Deal and other reforms adopted during the Progressive Era. A key reason we diverged from this path is due to race. As any decent class/economics-centered progressive knows, racialized identity politics are a very successful tool to encourage divisions between the working class. Turchin's primary example here is the "Southern strategy" used by Goldwater, Nixon, and Reagan.
- page 156: Wealthy liberals often undermine the pillars of society through such politically schizophrenic actions as, on the one hand, supporting politicians who run on lowering taxes, and on the other hand, funding radical-left causes that deepen societal polarization.
- page 175: The Soviet Union was basically a giant corporation in which the state owned the wealth-producing assets. After its collapse, in Russia the economic elites (the oligarchs) seized control, and so became a plutocracy. Under Putin, the administrative and military elites took control, and so modern Russia has returned to being an autocracy along the lines of Imperial Russia. This is a familiar pattern for this country. Turchin makes a point that "political culture tends to be resilient and usually reconstructs itself." This point also explains the differences in both Ukraine and Belarus to Russia. In the former, the economic elites turned on each other; in the latter, the administrative-military elites stayed strong. Another point, on page 180: "All complex societies are vulnerable to the disintegrative forces of elite overproduction, which is why they all experience periodic social breakdowns. But plutocracies... are particularly vulnerable."
- page 202: Turchin on the idea of a civil war (which he acknowledges may strike some as unrealistic): "...to bring the system to a positive equilibrium, the [wealth] pump must be shut down. We can model this by driving the relative wage up to the point where upward and downward rates of mobility between commoners and elites are balanced... [however,] Shutting down the pump reduces elite incomes, but it does not decrease their numbers. This is a recipe for converting a massive proportion of the elites into counter-elites, which most likely make the internal war even bloodier and more intense. However, after a painful and violent decade, the system will rapidly achieve equilibrium... the proportion of the population that is radicalized will fall, and the surplus elites will be eliminated... The end result will be a 'sharp short-term pain, long-term gain' outcome."
- It is well-known that in the U.S., wealth concentration is within 1% of our population. In contrast to that tiny percentage, in Germany, Austria, and France, wealth concentration is within 10% of their populations; in Denmark, it is 13%. We can look for no support from either major political party in addressing this disparity. Per page 237: "the Democratic Party, a party of the working class during the New Deal, became by 2000 the party of the credentialed 10 percent. The rival party, the Republican Party, primarily served the wealthy 1 percent, leaving the 90 percent out in the cold." I do wonder what Turchin makes of the current MAGA GOP and its army of populists. MAGA also includes a high number of counter-elites. Both groups having recently came out to play during the H-1B debate. 🤔 We do live in interesting times!
Turchin's ideas have received sharp criticism from some fellow social scientists. The center-left Yascha Mounk recently published a piece entitled "There Is No Surplus Elite in America". Similarly, the classical liberal Francis Fukuyama basically hand-waved Turchin aside in a dismissive review of this book for The New York Times. Both are writers that I admire; their thoughts on Turchin's pronouncements are well-worth seeking out. Keep in mind though that both gentlemen are decidedly elites - although within the credentialed 10% rather than the ultra-wealthy 1%. I'm just saying: they certainly have skin in this game!
💰💸🤑
original placeholder 'review':
seems apropos that I finished this excellent book on Election Day. maybe a bit on the nose though? anyway, review to come. time now to order some pizza, fix myself a whisky, turn on the tv, and actively make sure not to get hysterical or deranged. wish me luck LOL
March 10, 2024
Prior to Covid I would have told you that Berlin was one of my favorite metropolises anywhere in the norther hemisphere. Experienced as a foreign mit nur ein bisschen worte under my belt, I found the city to be affordable, exciting and tinged by a thin layer of the grime that so famously characterized the electric later years of 20th century NYC.
Casual Berlin stands in contrast to today’s article about the overproduction of elites. Puritanical aristocrats strangling society with their weird obsessions and disinclination to share a slice of the American dream. More than just a nuisance, Peter Turchin argues that the overproduction of elites is the single most influential factor in the breakdown of social order. This is a unique take on things, so how’s about if we investigate further?
-----------
I originally published this review on my Substack The Unhedged Capitalist - check out that article to read this review with images and better formatting...
https://theunhedgedcapitalist.substac...
-----------
Turchin begins by explaining that no matter how much prosperity is achieved, even the most competent countries must inevitably fall on hard times.
Why does a society fall on hard times? Turchin identifies four key drivers.
If we’re going to talk about elites we should probably define the term. The shape of an “elite” changes based on the culture, but within America we might loosely shoehorn him or her as someone with a (advanced) college degree who aspires to work a white collar or managerial job, earn an above average salary and dictate their personal beliefs to the country at large. Said person will harness their paycheck to gain access to such luxuries as Jarlsberg cheese, trendy vacations at approved locations, healthcare and a lease on the latest model BMW.
Half a century ago those creature comforts awaited many college grads since a diploma was relatively rare, but the magic couldn’t last forever. Starting in the 1970s the deal came under pressure as an ever increasing crowd began to chase the same degrees and thereafter the same employment.
The number of degrees exploded but the job openings didn’t increase fast enough to give everyone their shot at the stratosphere of society. By the time 2023 rolls around it’s standard practice for PhDs to pimp themselves out as glorified babysitters for $60k per annum, prodding prurient pupils down the halls of psych & philosophy 101. Hardly the romantic upper class lifestyle that these elite aspirants envisioned when they took out their $100k loans to get a doctorate. As disillusionment festers the frustrated elites take it upon themselves to claw at the upholstery of the society that has betrayed their aspirations.
Turchin argues that frustrated elites are extremely effective at dismantling society’s pillars, but I can’t claim to have completely understood his argument about intraelite competition and the exact way it tears a culture apart. I have ideas, but nothing solid enough to write about so I’ll have to ask for a pass. Instead, let’s move our attention to a topic I did better with: the fiscal methods that our glorious leaders use to disembowel the social contract.
Expanding inequality
Inequality is a common outcome in an elite heavy society, and boy have we got a lot of that going around. America has become the most unequal high income country in the world, where the top 0.1% control 12.8% of the country’s household wealth and the bottom 50% accounts for a paltry 2.4% of household wealth.
Turchin uses the analogy of a “wealth pump.” I didn’t feel any fondness for this phrase initially but it grew on me as I progressed through the book. QE is the most blatant wealth pump, since it benefits assets holders at the expense of the fifty-percent of Americans who aren’t invested in the markets.
- Steve Eisman
But the wealth pump is more complex than just monetary policy from the Fed. America’s GDP was $25.4 trillion in 2022. Imagine that money getting squirted out of a hose. Where is the hose pointed? Turchin argues that as the number of elites grow they enact policies at a local, state and federal level that favor themselves at the expense of the working class. And what do elites have that others don’t? College degrees!
You want to be a CEO, work at a nuclear power plant, become an engineer, manage a factory? Show me your degree! While this might sound natural enough, we should consider that it keeps millions of qualified people out of good positions. The elites use regulation to ensure that the best jobs go to the educationally ordained, much to the impoverishment of the 60% of Americans who don’t have a degree.
The good news is that this standard might be changing. A growing number of Americans understand that the universities have become a place where you get an ideology not an education. Employers are learning too, as they hire supposedly cream of the crop Harvard and Yale grads who turn out to be privileged duds heavy on outrage and light on contribution. I like to imagine a future in which competence tests become the new standard, even if the path to adopting them is treacherous.
If we as a society begin hiring on the basis of competence instead of college “education,” that will be a tremendous step towards diverting the bounty of the wealth pump back towards ordinary Americans. And it can’t happen soon enough…
Conclusions
Although it feels like we’re three steps away from pulpifying each other with hammers and this is a huge deal, Turchin has indexed the annals of history to prove that our time is far from unprecedented. A one to two hundred year cycle of integration and disintegration is to be found in the history of almost any prosperous society, whether the UK, US, Middle East or China.
Not all societies have survived, but despite the bloodshed and bitter hatred the US has historically always managed to pull through. It is my hope that this time is no different, but for that to happen Turchin argues that two things must come to pass.
First, a reduction in elites. This doesn’t have to be as sinister as it sounds. A reduction in elites could mean younger generations going to trade school instead of university, and existing degree holders giving up on San Francisco and moving to Boise to work at an office supply store. OK, stupid example. Maybe you can think of something better but the point is that we need a certain portion of elite aspirants to give up their lofty ideals and join the real world.
Second, the remaining elites must be willing to split the proceeds of the wealth pump. They have to do more than just placate the middle class while ignoring all of their wants and desire. Ideally these changes can happen without a violent overthrow, a scenario I am all for. And Turchin is too, for that matter.
So let us look for ways to survive this End Time, or 4th Turning if you prefer, without losing our minds and one hopes that the America of the 2030s and 40s is a saner and more prosperous place to live.
Casual Berlin stands in contrast to today’s article about the overproduction of elites. Puritanical aristocrats strangling society with their weird obsessions and disinclination to share a slice of the American dream. More than just a nuisance, Peter Turchin argues that the overproduction of elites is the single most influential factor in the breakdown of social order. This is a unique take on things, so how’s about if we investigate further?
-----------
I originally published this review on my Substack The Unhedged Capitalist - check out that article to read this review with images and better formatting...
https://theunhedgedcapitalist.substac...
-----------
All complex human societies organizes as states experience recurrent waves of political instability. The most common pattern is an alternation of integrative and disintegrative phases lasting for roughly a century.
Turchin begins by explaining that no matter how much prosperity is achieved, even the most competent countries must inevitably fall on hard times.
It turns out that ever since the first complex societies organized as states appeared—roughly five thousand years ago—no matter how successful they might be for a while, eventually they all run into problems. All complex societies go through cycles of alternating stretches of internal peace and harmony periodically interrupted by outbreaks of internal warfare and discord.
Why does a society fall on hard times? Turchin identifies four key drivers.
Our analysis points to four structural drivers of instability: popular immiseration leading to mass mobilization potential; elite overproduction resulting in intraelite conflict; failing fiscal health and weakened legitimacy of the state; and geopolitical factors. The most important driver is intraelite competition and conflict, which is a reliable predictor of the looming crisis.
If we’re going to talk about elites we should probably define the term. The shape of an “elite” changes based on the culture, but within America we might loosely shoehorn him or her as someone with a (advanced) college degree who aspires to work a white collar or managerial job, earn an above average salary and dictate their personal beliefs to the country at large. Said person will harness their paycheck to gain access to such luxuries as Jarlsberg cheese, trendy vacations at approved locations, healthcare and a lease on the latest model BMW.
Half a century ago those creature comforts awaited many college grads since a diploma was relatively rare, but the magic couldn’t last forever. Starting in the 1970s the deal came under pressure as an ever increasing crowd began to chase the same degrees and thereafter the same employment.
The number of degrees exploded but the job openings didn’t increase fast enough to give everyone their shot at the stratosphere of society. By the time 2023 rolls around it’s standard practice for PhDs to pimp themselves out as glorified babysitters for $60k per annum, prodding prurient pupils down the halls of psych & philosophy 101. Hardly the romantic upper class lifestyle that these elite aspirants envisioned when they took out their $100k loans to get a doctorate. As disillusionment festers the frustrated elites take it upon themselves to claw at the upholstery of the society that has betrayed their aspirations.
Turchin argues that frustrated elites are extremely effective at dismantling society’s pillars, but I can’t claim to have completely understood his argument about intraelite competition and the exact way it tears a culture apart. I have ideas, but nothing solid enough to write about so I’ll have to ask for a pass. Instead, let’s move our attention to a topic I did better with: the fiscal methods that our glorious leaders use to disembowel the social contract.
Because the most recent period of social and political turbulence in the United States was the 1960s, which were very mild by historical standards, Americans today grossly underestimate the fragility of the complex society in which we live. But an important lesson from history is that people living in previous precrisis eras similarly didn’t imagine that their societies could suddenly crumble around them.
Expanding inequality
Inequality is a common outcome in an elite heavy society, and boy have we got a lot of that going around. America has become the most unequal high income country in the world, where the top 0.1% control 12.8% of the country’s household wealth and the bottom 50% accounts for a paltry 2.4% of household wealth.
A wealth pump is one of the most destabilizing social mechanisms known to humanity.
Turchin uses the analogy of a “wealth pump.” I didn’t feel any fondness for this phrase initially but it grew on me as I progressed through the book. QE is the most blatant wealth pump, since it benefits assets holders at the expense of the fifty-percent of Americans who aren’t invested in the markets.
QE is no more than monetary policy for rich people.
- Steve Eisman
But the wealth pump is more complex than just monetary policy from the Fed. America’s GDP was $25.4 trillion in 2022. Imagine that money getting squirted out of a hose. Where is the hose pointed? Turchin argues that as the number of elites grow they enact policies at a local, state and federal level that favor themselves at the expense of the working class. And what do elites have that others don’t? College degrees!
You want to be a CEO, work at a nuclear power plant, become an engineer, manage a factory? Show me your degree! While this might sound natural enough, we should consider that it keeps millions of qualified people out of good positions. The elites use regulation to ensure that the best jobs go to the educationally ordained, much to the impoverishment of the 60% of Americans who don’t have a degree.
The good news is that this standard might be changing. A growing number of Americans understand that the universities have become a place where you get an ideology not an education. Employers are learning too, as they hire supposedly cream of the crop Harvard and Yale grads who turn out to be privileged duds heavy on outrage and light on contribution. I like to imagine a future in which competence tests become the new standard, even if the path to adopting them is treacherous.
If we as a society begin hiring on the basis of competence instead of college “education,” that will be a tremendous step towards diverting the bounty of the wealth pump back towards ordinary Americans. And it can’t happen soon enough…
Conclusions
Although it feels like we’re three steps away from pulpifying each other with hammers and this is a huge deal, Turchin has indexed the annals of history to prove that our time is far from unprecedented. A one to two hundred year cycle of integration and disintegration is to be found in the history of almost any prosperous society, whether the UK, US, Middle East or China.
As we examine one case of state breakdown after another, we invariably see that, in each case, the overwhelming majority of precrisis elites—whether they belonged to the antebellum slavocracy, the nobility of the French ancien regime, or the Russian intelligentsia circa 1900—were clueless about the catastrophe that was about to engulf them. They shook the foundations of the state and then were surprised when the state crumbled.
Not all societies have survived, but despite the bloodshed and bitter hatred the US has historically always managed to pull through. It is my hope that this time is no different, but for that to happen Turchin argues that two things must come to pass.
First, a reduction in elites. This doesn’t have to be as sinister as it sounds. A reduction in elites could mean younger generations going to trade school instead of university, and existing degree holders giving up on San Francisco and moving to Boise to work at an office supply store. OK, stupid example. Maybe you can think of something better but the point is that we need a certain portion of elite aspirants to give up their lofty ideals and join the real world.
Second, the remaining elites must be willing to split the proceeds of the wealth pump. They have to do more than just placate the middle class while ignoring all of their wants and desire. Ideally these changes can happen without a violent overthrow, a scenario I am all for. And Turchin is too, for that matter.
So let us look for ways to survive this End Time, or 4th Turning if you prefer, without losing our minds and one hopes that the America of the 2030s and 40s is a saner and more prosperous place to live.
July 9, 2023
When computers come back with racist results, we rightly attribute it to their programming. When a computer model seems to confirm your preferred political theory, we should also attribute it to its programming.
I'm not a skeptic of the possibility of cliodynamics as a science. I think we will find signal in the noise with enough analysis, enough to make some testable predictions. I agree with Turchin's basic point that you probably need some explanatory theory to go with it for it to make sense, but here's where the error can get introduced. There's very little in this book that Turchin's database comes up with that an AI trained on Howard Zinn books and Bernie Sanders speeches wouldn't come up with.
But so many of the statistical proxies used in this book seem forced. Turchin uses height to measure popular immiseration. Yet India consistently shows up among the happiest nations. There's more to it than that. Maybe he should just call it poorer nutrition and not immiseration. Some of the groupings are bizarre too. Is the Great Depression really the same thing or as bad the Civil War? Are labor riots where 52 people die in the same class as those at all?
Worse, things that are bad in one context (trade) are good in the other (lifting a grain tariff). Sometimes, we need to listen to the people's voice, sometimes they're just pawns of propaganda. (And you can bet those times correlate with Turchin's views.) "Avowed Neo Nazi" Azov brigades are bad, but Neo Nazis storming the Capitol don't get labeled as such when that topic comes up. The media elite sways the people but college professors are too busy studying bugs (very self-serving for a college professor, no?) So much tendentiousness.
All of our alt-left tropes are here. It was the Clintons who done it! A skeptical take on Ukraine. Trump was trying to do x but the ruling class (read: deep state) stopped him. Noam Chomsky has been silenced!! (Seriously, my god he hasn’t had a NYT Op-ed since March!) The elites stopped Bernie Sanders in 2016 and 2020 (those elite black South Carolinians, I tell you!) I was getting ready for a hot anti-vax take, but it didn't make the cut. An extended glowup of Tucker Carlson did. No mention of a Democratic president spending his entire political capital to try and stop the popular immiseration with healthcare. Why are these populists opposed to Medicaid expansion and the CFPB? Why do they push through only huge corporate tax cuts but no minimum wage rise?
I could go on. It's Horseshoe Theory: the book. Anyone who thinks Trump was a populist loses credibility with me. His rhetoric was, at least at the start, but now he just whines about losing. But if you ignore Twitter, Trump was a standard issue post-Eisenhower Republican. His lasting achievements are a tax cut (rise on blue states) and appointing judges who overturned Roe. Populist? Nah.
Among many flaws in Turchin's "theoretical model" is a flawed understanding of our Constitutional system. If the parties who won elections in the US could enact their platforms wholesale, it would make more sense to talk about the Ruling Class vetoing this or that. The reality is there are too many veto points and unless you have the rare consensus, nothing will happen. Nothing happening is the default in our system no matter who wins. If Turchin’s model held without epicycles, more pro-elite things would happen than they do. There is basically zero discussion of Obama because his main achievement was a massive program to counter popular immiseration right in the time when Turchin’s model says the elites should only be allowing “fuck you I got mine.”
The basic case that "elite overproduction" and "popular immiseration" lead to political troubles seems almost tautological and less of a scientific theory of political turbulence, again, if for no other reason than all manner of different events seem to fall under Turchin's rubric of turbulent periods.
Turchin's background is as a biologist and his Malthusian priors seem to dominate everything. This is why he writes at length against immigration and for a sort of redistributive political agenda while oddly at the same time saying we have one. Again, it's hard to describe how all over the place this book is. He has this very Russian/Tolstoian Deterministic view of history that discounts leadership as just a "Great Man" theory while paying lip service to the "nudges" leadership can provide.
If anything from a few riots to a civil war is a crisis, then you can definitely say they show up at regular intervals. I don't think this book ads much to anything mainly for that reason.
Despite his background as a biologist, he seems to misunderstand what is science and what is not. While there is no universally agreed upon test, the most often one is that science produces empirically falsifiable hypothesis (Popper). What Turchin claims is the definition, however, disagrees with none other than Isaac Newton. Turchin claims using theory to explain phenomena is pseudo-science. That may be a prudential truism in social sciences, but if you believe this applies generally, then you can throw out, for example, dark matter. We use the theory of General Relativity and to explain observations about the acceleration of the universe. It takes more than one observation to break a theory that explains a lot of verified phenomena, but Turchin doesn't make that distinction.
If Turchin is proposing a new philosophy of science, he needs to do a lot more work than is here. I think he goes down this rabbit hole to explain why cliodynamics isn't a pseudoscience and some conspiracy theories are. Again, I think cliodynamics can be a science and it's Turchin himself that proposes a theory of it: popular immiseration and elite overproduction and it is Turchin himself that sort of blurs lines to keep that theory working. He's made a prediction about the 2020s, so we'll see if he accepts the results or does what pseudoscientists do and add epicycles, which is different. It's a fine line, but it's one that has been accepted since Newton. His basic explanatory theory, that class dynamics drive history, isn't much different from Marxism—he just adds a Malthusian take on population dynamics—and let's just say that whatever else Marx claimed, the sort of Hegelian nous of history isn't one of his empirically verified ones.
I'm sympathetic to some of the views in here, but I didn't leave the book persuaded about anything. On the contrary, it made me worry I'm as echo chambered as Turchin.
I'm not a skeptic of the possibility of cliodynamics as a science. I think we will find signal in the noise with enough analysis, enough to make some testable predictions. I agree with Turchin's basic point that you probably need some explanatory theory to go with it for it to make sense, but here's where the error can get introduced. There's very little in this book that Turchin's database comes up with that an AI trained on Howard Zinn books and Bernie Sanders speeches wouldn't come up with.
But so many of the statistical proxies used in this book seem forced. Turchin uses height to measure popular immiseration. Yet India consistently shows up among the happiest nations. There's more to it than that. Maybe he should just call it poorer nutrition and not immiseration. Some of the groupings are bizarre too. Is the Great Depression really the same thing or as bad the Civil War? Are labor riots where 52 people die in the same class as those at all?
Worse, things that are bad in one context (trade) are good in the other (lifting a grain tariff). Sometimes, we need to listen to the people's voice, sometimes they're just pawns of propaganda. (And you can bet those times correlate with Turchin's views.) "Avowed Neo Nazi" Azov brigades are bad, but Neo Nazis storming the Capitol don't get labeled as such when that topic comes up. The media elite sways the people but college professors are too busy studying bugs (very self-serving for a college professor, no?) So much tendentiousness.
All of our alt-left tropes are here. It was the Clintons who done it! A skeptical take on Ukraine. Trump was trying to do x but the ruling class (read: deep state) stopped him. Noam Chomsky has been silenced!! (Seriously, my god he hasn’t had a NYT Op-ed since March!) The elites stopped Bernie Sanders in 2016 and 2020 (those elite black South Carolinians, I tell you!) I was getting ready for a hot anti-vax take, but it didn't make the cut. An extended glowup of Tucker Carlson did. No mention of a Democratic president spending his entire political capital to try and stop the popular immiseration with healthcare. Why are these populists opposed to Medicaid expansion and the CFPB? Why do they push through only huge corporate tax cuts but no minimum wage rise?
I could go on. It's Horseshoe Theory: the book. Anyone who thinks Trump was a populist loses credibility with me. His rhetoric was, at least at the start, but now he just whines about losing. But if you ignore Twitter, Trump was a standard issue post-Eisenhower Republican. His lasting achievements are a tax cut (rise on blue states) and appointing judges who overturned Roe. Populist? Nah.
Among many flaws in Turchin's "theoretical model" is a flawed understanding of our Constitutional system. If the parties who won elections in the US could enact their platforms wholesale, it would make more sense to talk about the Ruling Class vetoing this or that. The reality is there are too many veto points and unless you have the rare consensus, nothing will happen. Nothing happening is the default in our system no matter who wins. If Turchin’s model held without epicycles, more pro-elite things would happen than they do. There is basically zero discussion of Obama because his main achievement was a massive program to counter popular immiseration right in the time when Turchin’s model says the elites should only be allowing “fuck you I got mine.”
The basic case that "elite overproduction" and "popular immiseration" lead to political troubles seems almost tautological and less of a scientific theory of political turbulence, again, if for no other reason than all manner of different events seem to fall under Turchin's rubric of turbulent periods.
Turchin's background is as a biologist and his Malthusian priors seem to dominate everything. This is why he writes at length against immigration and for a sort of redistributive political agenda while oddly at the same time saying we have one. Again, it's hard to describe how all over the place this book is. He has this very Russian/Tolstoian Deterministic view of history that discounts leadership as just a "Great Man" theory while paying lip service to the "nudges" leadership can provide.
If anything from a few riots to a civil war is a crisis, then you can definitely say they show up at regular intervals. I don't think this book ads much to anything mainly for that reason.
Despite his background as a biologist, he seems to misunderstand what is science and what is not. While there is no universally agreed upon test, the most often one is that science produces empirically falsifiable hypothesis (Popper). What Turchin claims is the definition, however, disagrees with none other than Isaac Newton. Turchin claims using theory to explain phenomena is pseudo-science. That may be a prudential truism in social sciences, but if you believe this applies generally, then you can throw out, for example, dark matter. We use the theory of General Relativity and to explain observations about the acceleration of the universe. It takes more than one observation to break a theory that explains a lot of verified phenomena, but Turchin doesn't make that distinction.
If Turchin is proposing a new philosophy of science, he needs to do a lot more work than is here. I think he goes down this rabbit hole to explain why cliodynamics isn't a pseudoscience and some conspiracy theories are. Again, I think cliodynamics can be a science and it's Turchin himself that proposes a theory of it: popular immiseration and elite overproduction and it is Turchin himself that sort of blurs lines to keep that theory working. He's made a prediction about the 2020s, so we'll see if he accepts the results or does what pseudoscientists do and add epicycles, which is different. It's a fine line, but it's one that has been accepted since Newton. His basic explanatory theory, that class dynamics drive history, isn't much different from Marxism—he just adds a Malthusian take on population dynamics—and let's just say that whatever else Marx claimed, the sort of Hegelian nous of history isn't one of his empirically verified ones.
I'm sympathetic to some of the views in here, but I didn't leave the book persuaded about anything. On the contrary, it made me worry I'm as echo chambered as Turchin.
October 26, 2023
So, in 2016, Peter Turchin published "Ages of Discord", the book in which he applied "cliodynamics" to the modern United States of America. Cliodynamics is an attempt to bring numerical methods from the biological sciences (for example, in modeling how predator and prey populations interact) to human societies. In it, he repeated the prediction (which he first publicly made in an article in a scholarly journal in 2010) that the US was headed for a political crisis, potentially to the brink of civil war, in around the year 2020. Needless to say, while the events of 2020 did not quite match the events of 1861, they did come closer than at any time in a century and a half (the election of 1876 being the last one which resulted in such a divisive result). This resulted in Turchin getting quite a bit more exposure to the general public, probably reaching a crescendo when the Atlantic Monthly published an article on him. However, while many became curious, one major thing held people back from buying "Ages of Discord", in order to help understand what the underlying forces were tearing the social fabric apart.
"Ages of Discord", the book, had equations in it.
Let's face it, that is a dealbreaker for a lot of people. It's not like there were very many, it's not like they went beyond basic algebra, it's not like the reader had to solve any of those equations anyway. Nonetheless, the presence of an equation, or any mathematical notation really, is just anathema to most readers, for whatever reason. Thus, while there was a lot of buzz around Turchin, most people did not read it. I even had a friend who, in the wake of the inauguration day protests/riot (it's a sign of how divided we are that we cannot as a society even agree on what to call the events of that day), borrowed my copy, and never got around to reading it because, you know, math.
So, Turchin is back¸ and he's left the math behind.
There is not a single equation to be found in "End Times". There is not a single graph. The content, conceptually, is much the same, but it is all in words, sometimes in short character sketches. One is reminded of the scene in the original Foundation series by Isaac Asimov, where the elder psychohistorian challenges the young one to explain the current situation without using any math. I found it a little annoying, myself, since I much prefer graphs and numbers (and charts and maps and photographs and drawings) along with the words. But, if you're the type for whom all of that non-word content is distracting, or worse yet distressing, this is the book to explain to you What The Heck Is Wrong With People.
Turchin's thesis is probably not one that I can really summarize here (if I could, you wouldn't need a book), but the most important part is that there is a repeating cycle in human history, including the United States:
phase 1: Things are generally good for the populace; they can eat well, do better than the generation before, support kids, etc. etc. The elite, of course, do much better than the general populace (more or less by definition), but everyone is seeing things get better over time.
phase 2: The growth starts to slow down (for one of many reasons), and the elite start to turn the screws harder in order to keep things improving for themselves. This means that the general populace starts to see their position stagnate, or even get worse. Because the general populace has little or no organizational experience, however, this results in little (aside from grumbling).
phase 3: The elite start to have so much trouble maintaining their upward trajectory, that it causes a split between the top of the elite, and the lower part. The upper elite try to do to the lower elite, what the elite in general did to the general populace (squeeze more out of them, to keep more for yourself). However, there is one big problem; the lower elite have organizational and rhetorical and leadership skills (and practice) that the general population does not. A counter-elite forms, rallying popular discontent in an attempt to displace the upper elite.
phase 4: The crisis, where the conflict between the elite and the counter-elite (backed by popular discontent) reaches the boiling point. This lasts until it results in either the old elite being killed off and replaced by the counter-elite, or the two elites both suffer so many losses that they are now (even together) small enough in size to not need to squeeze the populace so hard, or in more recent times the rates of crime, rioting, etc. reach levels that alarm the elites into changing the rules so that more of society's wealth stays with the general populace. Return to phase 1.
Now, there is a lot of detail to each of these phases, and it does not happen in exactly the same way everywhere (or everywhen). In ancient Rome, there was a lot of fratricide and assassination among the elites during phase 4. In 19th century America, the old elite (plantation owners in the South, merchants in the North who shipped the plantation-produced goods to Europe) were displaced by the new industrial elite, and power at the national level shifted away from the South and towards the North. In the mid-20th century, a smaller crisis was resolved when the specter of communism in eastern Europe scared the wealthy elite into sharing more with the general populace. Turchin does a good job of demonstrating how each phase works, why each one leads inexorably towards the next, and why it is happening now.
Turchin has stated, on a number of occasions, that there is nothing inevitable about lurching towards a civil war. We have the capacity to change how this all works. However, before we can fix the problem, we need to understand where it comes from. If math is not how you naturally think, but you would still like to get a better understanding of what has been pushing society in the direction it's been going in recent decades, Turchin has made a book that speaks your language.
"Ages of Discord", the book, had equations in it.
Let's face it, that is a dealbreaker for a lot of people. It's not like there were very many, it's not like they went beyond basic algebra, it's not like the reader had to solve any of those equations anyway. Nonetheless, the presence of an equation, or any mathematical notation really, is just anathema to most readers, for whatever reason. Thus, while there was a lot of buzz around Turchin, most people did not read it. I even had a friend who, in the wake of the inauguration day protests/riot (it's a sign of how divided we are that we cannot as a society even agree on what to call the events of that day), borrowed my copy, and never got around to reading it because, you know, math.
So, Turchin is back¸ and he's left the math behind.
There is not a single equation to be found in "End Times". There is not a single graph. The content, conceptually, is much the same, but it is all in words, sometimes in short character sketches. One is reminded of the scene in the original Foundation series by Isaac Asimov, where the elder psychohistorian challenges the young one to explain the current situation without using any math. I found it a little annoying, myself, since I much prefer graphs and numbers (and charts and maps and photographs and drawings) along with the words. But, if you're the type for whom all of that non-word content is distracting, or worse yet distressing, this is the book to explain to you What The Heck Is Wrong With People.
Turchin's thesis is probably not one that I can really summarize here (if I could, you wouldn't need a book), but the most important part is that there is a repeating cycle in human history, including the United States:
phase 1: Things are generally good for the populace; they can eat well, do better than the generation before, support kids, etc. etc. The elite, of course, do much better than the general populace (more or less by definition), but everyone is seeing things get better over time.
phase 2: The growth starts to slow down (for one of many reasons), and the elite start to turn the screws harder in order to keep things improving for themselves. This means that the general populace starts to see their position stagnate, or even get worse. Because the general populace has little or no organizational experience, however, this results in little (aside from grumbling).
phase 3: The elite start to have so much trouble maintaining their upward trajectory, that it causes a split between the top of the elite, and the lower part. The upper elite try to do to the lower elite, what the elite in general did to the general populace (squeeze more out of them, to keep more for yourself). However, there is one big problem; the lower elite have organizational and rhetorical and leadership skills (and practice) that the general population does not. A counter-elite forms, rallying popular discontent in an attempt to displace the upper elite.
phase 4: The crisis, where the conflict between the elite and the counter-elite (backed by popular discontent) reaches the boiling point. This lasts until it results in either the old elite being killed off and replaced by the counter-elite, or the two elites both suffer so many losses that they are now (even together) small enough in size to not need to squeeze the populace so hard, or in more recent times the rates of crime, rioting, etc. reach levels that alarm the elites into changing the rules so that more of society's wealth stays with the general populace. Return to phase 1.
Now, there is a lot of detail to each of these phases, and it does not happen in exactly the same way everywhere (or everywhen). In ancient Rome, there was a lot of fratricide and assassination among the elites during phase 4. In 19th century America, the old elite (plantation owners in the South, merchants in the North who shipped the plantation-produced goods to Europe) were displaced by the new industrial elite, and power at the national level shifted away from the South and towards the North. In the mid-20th century, a smaller crisis was resolved when the specter of communism in eastern Europe scared the wealthy elite into sharing more with the general populace. Turchin does a good job of demonstrating how each phase works, why each one leads inexorably towards the next, and why it is happening now.
Turchin has stated, on a number of occasions, that there is nothing inevitable about lurching towards a civil war. We have the capacity to change how this all works. However, before we can fix the problem, we need to understand where it comes from. If math is not how you naturally think, but you would still like to get a better understanding of what has been pushing society in the direction it's been going in recent decades, Turchin has made a book that speaks your language.
May 4, 2024
Cum explicăm ascensiunea lui Trump?
Majoritatea cărților se concentrează pe factorul economic. Este "revolta muncitorului american alb". În ultimele decenii, în SUA, productivitatea economică a tot crescut, în timp ce salariile muncitorilor au stagnat. Cauzele sunt diverse, de la mutarea fabricilor peste granițe la automatizare. Ceea ce aduce Peter Turchin nou în discuție este supraproducția de elite. Sărăcirea maselor și supraproducția de elite creează un cocktail exploziv. Elitele pot organiza și canaliza frustrarea populară.
Masele au sărăcit, dar elitele au prosperat. Piramida a devenit foarte grea la vârf. Numărul de locuri disponibile în structurile statului nu s-a schimbat. Competiția acerbă dintre elite face ca riscul ca regulile jocului să fie încălcate să fie foarte mare. Trump este primul președinte american care anterior nu a ocupat nicio funcție publică. Și-a încheiat mandatul cu o insurecție.
Istoricul Ibn Khaldun a observat că o dinastie durează în lumea musulmană în jur de o sută de ani. în Europa, în acea perioadă, o dinastie dura două-trei secole. Poligamia din lumea musulmană duce la o supraproducție de elite.
Recomand
Majoritatea cărților se concentrează pe factorul economic. Este "revolta muncitorului american alb". În ultimele decenii, în SUA, productivitatea economică a tot crescut, în timp ce salariile muncitorilor au stagnat. Cauzele sunt diverse, de la mutarea fabricilor peste granițe la automatizare. Ceea ce aduce Peter Turchin nou în discuție este supraproducția de elite. Sărăcirea maselor și supraproducția de elite creează un cocktail exploziv. Elitele pot organiza și canaliza frustrarea populară.
Masele au sărăcit, dar elitele au prosperat. Piramida a devenit foarte grea la vârf. Numărul de locuri disponibile în structurile statului nu s-a schimbat. Competiția acerbă dintre elite face ca riscul ca regulile jocului să fie încălcate să fie foarte mare. Trump este primul președinte american care anterior nu a ocupat nicio funcție publică. Și-a încheiat mandatul cu o insurecție.
Istoricul Ibn Khaldun a observat că o dinastie durează în lumea musulmană în jur de o sută de ani. în Europa, în acea perioadă, o dinastie dura două-trei secole. Poligamia din lumea musulmană duce la o supraproducție de elite.
Recomand
August 17, 2023
I made the mistake of buying this book after thumbing through it and thinking it looked interesting. What a disappointment. It claims to be about some grand, scientific theory of history named “cliodynamics” but this superficial book is remarkably free of analysis, statistics or deep insight.
Chapters often begin with some story of made up characters who are stereotypes that the author wants to propagate - mostly some cartoonish limousine liberal vs. some hard working, down on his luck, white working class dude. His historical vignettesre no better - e.g., a brief outline of Egypt’s history of a tendency toward military dictatorship, from which he draws the conclusion that “in order to understand the forces of instablity…we have to place them within the institutional frameworks of the country we are interested in.” Duh?
If you want to know what this book is about, skip to page 216 when he lavishes praise on Tucker Carlson, admitting that “His critique of the American ruling class in many places parallels our analysis of the social forces driving the United States to the edge.” Yep, the author buys the nonsense about Trump, Carlson and company being “populists” because they harness the anger of a lot of lower and lower-middle class white people - despite the fact that the whole point of that charade is to direct that anger away from billionaires like Trump so that the plutocrat class can continue to keep its taxes low and get away with every crime in the book.
The author, in his endless effort to comply with the mainstream media’s “Both sides are always equal” mandate, repeats a lot of Fox News propaganda as gospel truth, e.g., that “antifa” is some kind of major faction of the Democratic party as opposed to a small number of kids in a tiny number of cities who liked to pretend to be ninjas. And he more than once denounces the entirety of the evidence of Putin’s millions of dollars of investment to help Trump win and Trump’s later, multiple paybacks to Russia as just a “conspiracy theory.”
So if you’re looking for one more opportunity to be reassured that all your right wing fantasies are true, here’s one more book for you…
Chapters often begin with some story of made up characters who are stereotypes that the author wants to propagate - mostly some cartoonish limousine liberal vs. some hard working, down on his luck, white working class dude. His historical vignettesre no better - e.g., a brief outline of Egypt’s history of a tendency toward military dictatorship, from which he draws the conclusion that “in order to understand the forces of instablity…we have to place them within the institutional frameworks of the country we are interested in.” Duh?
If you want to know what this book is about, skip to page 216 when he lavishes praise on Tucker Carlson, admitting that “His critique of the American ruling class in many places parallels our analysis of the social forces driving the United States to the edge.” Yep, the author buys the nonsense about Trump, Carlson and company being “populists” because they harness the anger of a lot of lower and lower-middle class white people - despite the fact that the whole point of that charade is to direct that anger away from billionaires like Trump so that the plutocrat class can continue to keep its taxes low and get away with every crime in the book.
The author, in his endless effort to comply with the mainstream media’s “Both sides are always equal” mandate, repeats a lot of Fox News propaganda as gospel truth, e.g., that “antifa” is some kind of major faction of the Democratic party as opposed to a small number of kids in a tiny number of cities who liked to pretend to be ninjas. And he more than once denounces the entirety of the evidence of Putin’s millions of dollars of investment to help Trump win and Trump’s later, multiple paybacks to Russia as just a “conspiracy theory.”
So if you’re looking for one more opportunity to be reassured that all your right wing fantasies are true, here’s one more book for you…
September 16, 2023
Good book. Kind of academic but describes modern America pretty well.
It’s billed dramatically but the author is basically just saying we’re going through the same period of inflection as we did in like 1910s to 1920s. Middle 1800s, etc. Overproduction of educated “Elite” leads to a lot of sniping among well educated upper class. We don’t have enough good jobs so things get highly competitive. That competition leads to turmoil and things like Trump. None of that is super new, but I think he presents it well
I think the drawback of this book is that it is largely a liberal arts theory masquerading as a more rigorous framework. Having graphs and scoring on your theory does not all of a sudden turn it into physics. It helps. And I think this guy is way closer to some sort of objective truth then most of the chuckle fucks who wax polemical on these topics. The author convincingly shows a lot of the similarities between historical events and current situation. But I think the sort of original sin for all of these sorts of theories is that they want to be predictive in a domain, where prediction is very tenuous. It’s easy for your theory to sound beautiful in hindsight. It’s a lot harder to make some thing that actually allows good decisions in the future.
It’s billed dramatically but the author is basically just saying we’re going through the same period of inflection as we did in like 1910s to 1920s. Middle 1800s, etc. Overproduction of educated “Elite” leads to a lot of sniping among well educated upper class. We don’t have enough good jobs so things get highly competitive. That competition leads to turmoil and things like Trump. None of that is super new, but I think he presents it well
I think the drawback of this book is that it is largely a liberal arts theory masquerading as a more rigorous framework. Having graphs and scoring on your theory does not all of a sudden turn it into physics. It helps. And I think this guy is way closer to some sort of objective truth then most of the chuckle fucks who wax polemical on these topics. The author convincingly shows a lot of the similarities between historical events and current situation. But I think the sort of original sin for all of these sorts of theories is that they want to be predictive in a domain, where prediction is very tenuous. It’s easy for your theory to sound beautiful in hindsight. It’s a lot harder to make some thing that actually allows good decisions in the future.
May 13, 2024
End Times is by far my book of the year. Hell, it could be the book of the decade. It brings together the things that I find the most interesting in the world: history and statistics.
Turchin works in the field of 'cliodynamics' which basically tries to use statistical modelling techniques to predict crises in world history. Of course, as statisticians say all models are wrong but some are more wrong then others. It's probably impossible to have a perfect model of history but Turchin gives it a pretty damn good go. His model predicted the instability of the 2020s back in 2010. What does he base it on?
Societal collapse is caused by elite overproduction (too many rich) and popular immiseration (too many poor). These two factors work together to cause major crises. Turchin reviewed many of the famous collapses such as the Taiping Rebellion in 1840s China or the French revolution and found that in all cases there was an oversupply of elites that were fighting for power, a widening gap between the rich and the poor and a worsening condition for the lower classes.
The elites which don't have access to power start fighting in an attempt to gain power while the lower classes start rebelling. For example, during the Taiping rebellion the Chinese elites were competing for the Mandarin roles, but there were too many candidates and not enough roles. At the same time the lower classes were suffering from poverty. The leaders of the rebellion were elites that failed the public service entry exams and instead started a rebellion to which the lower classes rallied to.
Turchin then does a comparative analysis of the history of France and England. Both countries experienced cycles of disintegration and then recovery. They actually influenced each other and the collapse of one usually was followed by the collapse of the other with a delay of a few decades.
In general monogamous societies (such as the Western ones) collapse once every 200-250 years, while polygamous societies (such as the Mongol Empire or the Islamic empires) collapsed every 100 years due to higher elite overproduction (as noted even by Ibn Khaldoun who noticed that an Islamic dynasty ruled roughly for 100 years before it is replaced by another one).
But crises don't always lead to societal collapse. Turchin notes that in some cases the elites manage to make deals and sacrifice some of their power in order to preserve the order. In the XIX century the British and Russian Empires avoided revolutions by taking active measures. In Britain the people's charter reform gave extended rights to the common people and in Russia the serfs were freed. In Russia, this period of recovery lasted only for a generation until the disintegration once again started with the revolutions of 1905 and finally the collapse of 1917.
The main focus of the book is of course the United States. Like the other countries studied the US also experienced cycles of disintegration and recovery. During the XIXth century there was a rapid expansion of the wealthy class as the US industrialised and expanded, the South had extensive agricultural lands and an old ruling class descending from the British ruling class while the North had the newly enriched business class. Although slavery was a factor in triggering the war, the main reason for the Civil War was the rivalry and the struggle for power between the Southern old ruling class and the Northern newly enriched bourgeoisie. The civil war lead to the death of many of the elites and the reconstruction period things started looking up for the lower classes.
Following the recovery of the middle to late XIXth century there was yet another period when the elites started gaining more wealth and power and there was increasing social turmoil. At this point two things happened: a lot of the wealth of the elites was wiped out in the Great Depression and FDR's New Deal gave more rights and financial help to the working class. During the 1930-1950s there was elite consensus in the US that the lower classes should receive a fair share. By voluntarily forgoing some of their wealth to the working class the elites prevented a societal collapse.
The problem is that gradually the elites once again started accumulating more wealth and power and the working class started losing out. Real salaries started dropped since the 1970s. The life expectancy of working class American started dropping and today 30-40 yr olds have a lower life expetancy then their parents due to death of despair (alcohol, drugs, crime, suicide). Their heights have also been dropping due to diet. At the same time there are more and more elites, more and more people get degrees and the numbers of millionaires has been exploding.
This means that in the US both of the conditions for societal collapse are satisfied: elite overproduction and popular immiseration. The Democratic party used to be the party of the working class but is now more representative of the ruling elites, while the Republican party represents the interests of other elites that are challenging the status quo but are also using populism to engage the working classes. People such as Donald Trump, Tucker Carlson or Steve Bannon are all rich elites that are trying to challenge the status quo in order to gain political power.
It is interesting how immigration fits in the narrative. Although at face value the right-wing is against immigration, it actually favours immigration because it brings in cheap labour and depresses worker salaries. That is why for example someone like Bernie Sanders is against immigration, because he knows all it does is further the immiseration of the American working class.
If a new consensus is not forged it is likely that the US will face societal collapse. But is that inevitable? History says not necessarily. There are also good examples in European countries such as France, Denmark and Germany where the elites have forged a working relationship with the rest of the population and have shared their wealth.
Turchin works in the field of 'cliodynamics' which basically tries to use statistical modelling techniques to predict crises in world history. Of course, as statisticians say all models are wrong but some are more wrong then others. It's probably impossible to have a perfect model of history but Turchin gives it a pretty damn good go. His model predicted the instability of the 2020s back in 2010. What does he base it on?
Societal collapse is caused by elite overproduction (too many rich) and popular immiseration (too many poor). These two factors work together to cause major crises. Turchin reviewed many of the famous collapses such as the Taiping Rebellion in 1840s China or the French revolution and found that in all cases there was an oversupply of elites that were fighting for power, a widening gap between the rich and the poor and a worsening condition for the lower classes.
The elites which don't have access to power start fighting in an attempt to gain power while the lower classes start rebelling. For example, during the Taiping rebellion the Chinese elites were competing for the Mandarin roles, but there were too many candidates and not enough roles. At the same time the lower classes were suffering from poverty. The leaders of the rebellion were elites that failed the public service entry exams and instead started a rebellion to which the lower classes rallied to.
Turchin then does a comparative analysis of the history of France and England. Both countries experienced cycles of disintegration and then recovery. They actually influenced each other and the collapse of one usually was followed by the collapse of the other with a delay of a few decades.
In general monogamous societies (such as the Western ones) collapse once every 200-250 years, while polygamous societies (such as the Mongol Empire or the Islamic empires) collapsed every 100 years due to higher elite overproduction (as noted even by Ibn Khaldoun who noticed that an Islamic dynasty ruled roughly for 100 years before it is replaced by another one).
But crises don't always lead to societal collapse. Turchin notes that in some cases the elites manage to make deals and sacrifice some of their power in order to preserve the order. In the XIX century the British and Russian Empires avoided revolutions by taking active measures. In Britain the people's charter reform gave extended rights to the common people and in Russia the serfs were freed. In Russia, this period of recovery lasted only for a generation until the disintegration once again started with the revolutions of 1905 and finally the collapse of 1917.
The main focus of the book is of course the United States. Like the other countries studied the US also experienced cycles of disintegration and recovery. During the XIXth century there was a rapid expansion of the wealthy class as the US industrialised and expanded, the South had extensive agricultural lands and an old ruling class descending from the British ruling class while the North had the newly enriched business class. Although slavery was a factor in triggering the war, the main reason for the Civil War was the rivalry and the struggle for power between the Southern old ruling class and the Northern newly enriched bourgeoisie. The civil war lead to the death of many of the elites and the reconstruction period things started looking up for the lower classes.
Following the recovery of the middle to late XIXth century there was yet another period when the elites started gaining more wealth and power and there was increasing social turmoil. At this point two things happened: a lot of the wealth of the elites was wiped out in the Great Depression and FDR's New Deal gave more rights and financial help to the working class. During the 1930-1950s there was elite consensus in the US that the lower classes should receive a fair share. By voluntarily forgoing some of their wealth to the working class the elites prevented a societal collapse.
The problem is that gradually the elites once again started accumulating more wealth and power and the working class started losing out. Real salaries started dropped since the 1970s. The life expectancy of working class American started dropping and today 30-40 yr olds have a lower life expetancy then their parents due to death of despair (alcohol, drugs, crime, suicide). Their heights have also been dropping due to diet. At the same time there are more and more elites, more and more people get degrees and the numbers of millionaires has been exploding.
This means that in the US both of the conditions for societal collapse are satisfied: elite overproduction and popular immiseration. The Democratic party used to be the party of the working class but is now more representative of the ruling elites, while the Republican party represents the interests of other elites that are challenging the status quo but are also using populism to engage the working classes. People such as Donald Trump, Tucker Carlson or Steve Bannon are all rich elites that are trying to challenge the status quo in order to gain political power.
It is interesting how immigration fits in the narrative. Although at face value the right-wing is against immigration, it actually favours immigration because it brings in cheap labour and depresses worker salaries. That is why for example someone like Bernie Sanders is against immigration, because he knows all it does is further the immiseration of the American working class.
If a new consensus is not forged it is likely that the US will face societal collapse. But is that inevitable? History says not necessarily. There are also good examples in European countries such as France, Denmark and Germany where the elites have forged a working relationship with the rest of the population and have shared their wealth.
August 1, 2023
Подход к описанию политики и истории, который хотелось бы видеть почаще. Меньше красивых историй, больше информации и данных и основанных на них теорий, способных правильно предсказывать повороты истории, а не только «объяснять ее задним числом». Жаль только что автор сам не всегда идет в русле своего же подхода
November 20, 2023
Let's open this review with two Arnold Toynbee quotes. It'll set the mood:
End Times is a laudable attempt to present a science of history. The author, a biologist turned history theorist, Peter Turchin founded a field called cliodynamics. The name of course derives from the Greek goddess of history and heroic poetry, Clio, tacked in front of the study of why things change over time, dynamics. Cliodynamics represents a consilience of cultural evolution (dual-inheritance theory), economic history, macro-sociology (mostly demography), mathematical modeling, and database construction. The field is in its early pre-paradigmatic days, but Turchin contends they've a jump start because of the success in complexity science and cliodynamics is most mature when predicting civilization catastrophes (i.e. collapse).
Turchin then outlines what cliodynamics has taught us about collapse, identifying four primary predictors:
1) Popular immiseration (associated with economic stagnation and income/wealth inequality)
2) Elite overproduction (the most critical factor according to Turchin)
3) Institutional decline (problems of fiscal management, political leg
4) Geopolitic factors (he doesn't discuss these much but presumably these include natural resources, threats to sovereignty from foreign actors, ecological stability, etc)
After highlighting these four factors, he sort of hand waves away the last two largely (these happen to be the primary factors that many geopolitical analysts like Peter Zeihan care about), pointing primarily to popular immiseration and elite overproduction as the forces behind civilizational decline and collapse. Unfortunately, you just have to trust Turchin on these claims. That is, unless you are going to go dig into his publications, which Cliodynamics is its own journal so it's hard for non-experts to judge how broadly accepted such conclusion are. Although I was happy to read his book, I am not currently up for a deep dive into that literature. I'll take on what Turchin presents here, which isn't the most persuasive set of evidence.
To introduce his argument that American is approaching disaster, Turchin presents two fictional composites. One is a reluctant MAGA populist, driven to his populism by a lack of economic opportunity. The other is a scion of the upper slice of the professional-managerial class who exits her trajectory for activism then returns to her elite status as a Yalie law grad despite a committed radical political viewpoint. These composite accompany a reasonable though somewhat misguided economic analysis that claims that the American middle/working class has been taking it on the chin while America's plutocrats live large and/or squabbling over their outsize share of the pie. This is more or less Turchin's version of "that got-darn neoliberal turn ruined the New Deal consensus" nonsense that one typically hears from stereotypical left-wing economists.
This isn't to say there aren't some real things to think about in the analysis or that all of the claims are misguided in some way. However, the Piketty-like contention that we are seeing run-away income and wealth inequality is contradicted by the latest data. We are seeing income stratification on the decline. Moreover, it misses the larger point made by economic historian like Greg Clark that relative social status is fairly constant for long periods of times and the rate of social mobility is fairly low and consistent universally. Subsequently, it seems that paying attention to inequality as a driver of instability appears to miss the forest for the trees. Stagnation, a shrinking or fixed pie of spoils, is the more likely culprit. To state more clearly, inequality becomes a driver of instability when growth and opportunity is low. It is possible to try and make this argument about the United States today, but Turchin doesn't do that. Plus, if one does do this, it invite unfavorable cross-national comparisons. If the U.S. is unstable than its competitors must be even more unstable for the same reasons... This isn't addressed.
Unfortunately, this isn't the worst of the arguments tendered. The primary issue with Turchin's argument, as presented, is that he fails to operationalize and define elite status. How many seats are there in the elite? How do we know we have to many? Have local maxes of elite overproduction ever been navigated stably? We don't get answers to these questions in End Times.
Turchin is more or less aware of these issues in his claims. The implicit definition offered is that a college degree is qualifying. At least most of Turchin's claims about overproduction hang on trends in specific sectors that a tightly linked to higher ed: academia, law, etc. Further, I think few would meaningfully accept such a broad and fuzzy definition of elite. A B.S. in computer science from MIT has a vastly different earning potential and lifestyle than a B.A. in Women's Studies from some unknown liberal arts college or even a business major from a state school. Additionally, a big part of the thesis is about intra-elite competition drive by surplus. It is easy to gesture at trends that fit these ideas nicely and then construct a reasonable theory of how this explains today's America (basically Turchin points to how wokeness functions in prestige institutions), but this is likely to be an "overfit" argument confirmed by subjective feelings. It simply undersamples actual economic data and extrapolates too much. Again, it is possible Turchin has worked these claims out exquisitely with his data and models, but given the valence of his prediction relative to what we know about the reality of today, this seems like a long shot. It also still looks like scientism instead of science.
Ultimately, what I really love about the book is that Turchin has tried to wrestle with the specter of scientism in the project of a science of history. He engage the idea of psychohistory presented by Isaac Asimov in Foundations and the weaknesses of treating human agents as irrelevant. Turchin tries to square the circle of integrating materialist models of history with the Great Man theory, reifying a sort of Tolstoyian vision. A vision that is amenable to useful modeling but where human decisions matter. I think this is a reasonable theoretical view of history, and Turchin presents many interesting models. I just think his predictions are incorrect. I think the 20s will be less tumultuous than the 10s in America and that even the prediction of social unrest in 2020 that Turchin is celebrated for was more bark than bite. I mean relatives the Flyod protests and Jan 6 look like picnic next to the unrest of the 60s and 70s in America and both pale relative to the Civil War.
Ultimately, I think I think End Times deserves a good recommendation because it is a serious work that attempts to do interesting things with the data we have from the past. I'd bet against the predictions of the work and think some of Turchin's assumptions are flawed empirically and theoretically, but learning about cliodynamics is edifying.
Additional Reading
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/art...
https://x.com/Noahpinion/status/10407...
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/the-eli...
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/the-new...
Of the twenty-two civilizations that have appeared in history, nineteen of them collapsed when they reached the moral state the United States is in now.
If we take the antiquity of Man to be something like 300,000 years, then the antiquity of civilizations, so far from being coeval with human history, will be found to cover less than 2 percent of its present span: less than 6,000 years out of 300,000 . On this time-scale , the lives of our twenty-one civilizations-distributed over not more than three generations of societies and concentrated within less than one-fiftieth part of the lifetime of Mankind- must be regarded, on a philosophic view, as contemporary with one another.
― Arnold Joseph Toynbee
End Times is a laudable attempt to present a science of history. The author, a biologist turned history theorist, Peter Turchin founded a field called cliodynamics. The name of course derives from the Greek goddess of history and heroic poetry, Clio, tacked in front of the study of why things change over time, dynamics. Cliodynamics represents a consilience of cultural evolution (dual-inheritance theory), economic history, macro-sociology (mostly demography), mathematical modeling, and database construction. The field is in its early pre-paradigmatic days, but Turchin contends they've a jump start because of the success in complexity science and cliodynamics is most mature when predicting civilization catastrophes (i.e. collapse).
Turchin then outlines what cliodynamics has taught us about collapse, identifying four primary predictors:
1) Popular immiseration (associated with economic stagnation and income/wealth inequality)
2) Elite overproduction (the most critical factor according to Turchin)
3) Institutional decline (problems of fiscal management, political leg
4) Geopolitic factors (he doesn't discuss these much but presumably these include natural resources, threats to sovereignty from foreign actors, ecological stability, etc)
After highlighting these four factors, he sort of hand waves away the last two largely (these happen to be the primary factors that many geopolitical analysts like Peter Zeihan care about), pointing primarily to popular immiseration and elite overproduction as the forces behind civilizational decline and collapse. Unfortunately, you just have to trust Turchin on these claims. That is, unless you are going to go dig into his publications, which Cliodynamics is its own journal so it's hard for non-experts to judge how broadly accepted such conclusion are. Although I was happy to read his book, I am not currently up for a deep dive into that literature. I'll take on what Turchin presents here, which isn't the most persuasive set of evidence.
To introduce his argument that American is approaching disaster, Turchin presents two fictional composites. One is a reluctant MAGA populist, driven to his populism by a lack of economic opportunity. The other is a scion of the upper slice of the professional-managerial class who exits her trajectory for activism then returns to her elite status as a Yalie law grad despite a committed radical political viewpoint. These composite accompany a reasonable though somewhat misguided economic analysis that claims that the American middle/working class has been taking it on the chin while America's plutocrats live large and/or squabbling over their outsize share of the pie. This is more or less Turchin's version of "that got-darn neoliberal turn ruined the New Deal consensus" nonsense that one typically hears from stereotypical left-wing economists.
This isn't to say there aren't some real things to think about in the analysis or that all of the claims are misguided in some way. However, the Piketty-like contention that we are seeing run-away income and wealth inequality is contradicted by the latest data. We are seeing income stratification on the decline. Moreover, it misses the larger point made by economic historian like Greg Clark that relative social status is fairly constant for long periods of times and the rate of social mobility is fairly low and consistent universally. Subsequently, it seems that paying attention to inequality as a driver of instability appears to miss the forest for the trees. Stagnation, a shrinking or fixed pie of spoils, is the more likely culprit. To state more clearly, inequality becomes a driver of instability when growth and opportunity is low. It is possible to try and make this argument about the United States today, but Turchin doesn't do that. Plus, if one does do this, it invite unfavorable cross-national comparisons. If the U.S. is unstable than its competitors must be even more unstable for the same reasons... This isn't addressed.
Unfortunately, this isn't the worst of the arguments tendered. The primary issue with Turchin's argument, as presented, is that he fails to operationalize and define elite status. How many seats are there in the elite? How do we know we have to many? Have local maxes of elite overproduction ever been navigated stably? We don't get answers to these questions in End Times.
Turchin is more or less aware of these issues in his claims. The implicit definition offered is that a college degree is qualifying. At least most of Turchin's claims about overproduction hang on trends in specific sectors that a tightly linked to higher ed: academia, law, etc. Further, I think few would meaningfully accept such a broad and fuzzy definition of elite. A B.S. in computer science from MIT has a vastly different earning potential and lifestyle than a B.A. in Women's Studies from some unknown liberal arts college or even a business major from a state school. Additionally, a big part of the thesis is about intra-elite competition drive by surplus. It is easy to gesture at trends that fit these ideas nicely and then construct a reasonable theory of how this explains today's America (basically Turchin points to how wokeness functions in prestige institutions), but this is likely to be an "overfit" argument confirmed by subjective feelings. It simply undersamples actual economic data and extrapolates too much. Again, it is possible Turchin has worked these claims out exquisitely with his data and models, but given the valence of his prediction relative to what we know about the reality of today, this seems like a long shot. It also still looks like scientism instead of science.
Ultimately, what I really love about the book is that Turchin has tried to wrestle with the specter of scientism in the project of a science of history. He engage the idea of psychohistory presented by Isaac Asimov in Foundations and the weaknesses of treating human agents as irrelevant. Turchin tries to square the circle of integrating materialist models of history with the Great Man theory, reifying a sort of Tolstoyian vision. A vision that is amenable to useful modeling but where human decisions matter. I think this is a reasonable theoretical view of history, and Turchin presents many interesting models. I just think his predictions are incorrect. I think the 20s will be less tumultuous than the 10s in America and that even the prediction of social unrest in 2020 that Turchin is celebrated for was more bark than bite. I mean relatives the Flyod protests and Jan 6 look like picnic next to the unrest of the 60s and 70s in America and both pale relative to the Civil War.
Ultimately, I think I think End Times deserves a good recommendation because it is a serious work that attempts to do interesting things with the data we have from the past. I'd bet against the predictions of the work and think some of Turchin's assumptions are flawed empirically and theoretically, but learning about cliodynamics is edifying.
Additional Reading
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/art...
https://x.com/Noahpinion/status/10407...
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/the-eli...
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/the-new...
July 20, 2023
Of the 40ish books I read every year, there's usually one or two that blow me away with how much sense they make; books that offer such illuminating insights and perspectives that they change the way I think about certain issues. "End Times" is one such book. I'm a latecomer to his work, but Peter Turchin's twin lens of "popular immiseration" and "elite overproduction" as historically reliable precursors of political crises slots so many things into focus it's kind of eerie. 5/5
Read
January 23, 2025*N.B. my friends, I am no longer going to add ratings to my reviews. You probably noticed I just give everything 4 or 5 stars anyway, so it's not particularly meaningful, and I don't take my views on the quality of what I read very seriously, anyway. I am fortunate enough to currently only read books that I really want to read, anyway, and I'm rarely very disappointed. However, I will of course continue to provide some short textual reviews which I hope you (continue to, I tell myself) enjoy. Love.*
This book felt like a fever dream of ideological validation in the most self-indulgent way. Suddenly, all my deranged mutterings about why people in East Germany aren't racist for voting AfD; why inequality might be the greatest threat to our society of our time; and why so many well-meaning left-wing agendas seem to abhorrent to many otherwise socially-minded people were vilified, and even better, given simple, reductive form by Turchin. (To be clear, I'm not claiming any of the above ideas as my own, just that they were buzzing round my head but often seemed at odds with most of what I could find around me, save a few fringe sources).
I really like the way Turchin writes and argues, and I think his ideas and thesis are great. Taking a scientific, data-driven approach to the social sciences is exactly what our world needs, and I would encourage all of my STEM-y friends to look at this because here is a way you can apply your vast skills and knowledge to answer questions about the way we live and exist that have otherwise seemed out of reach.
Aside, I think this book is a really enjoyable read because the topic (social collapse) is inherently interesting, and the data-driven approach means that many examples are considered, which makes this a fun, fast pace ride through humanity's most exciting chapters.
I was a little annoyed at the frequent references to Turchin's other book, Ultrasociety, only because I selfishly want this to stand alone, but I guess I'll go read Ultrasociety anyway, now, and it's hard begrudge the author for not wanting to explain himself twice.
Yeah, read this, I'll probably bore the shit out of you talking about it in the next months, anyway.
This book felt like a fever dream of ideological validation in the most self-indulgent way. Suddenly, all my deranged mutterings about why people in East Germany aren't racist for voting AfD; why inequality might be the greatest threat to our society of our time; and why so many well-meaning left-wing agendas seem to abhorrent to many otherwise socially-minded people were vilified, and even better, given simple, reductive form by Turchin. (To be clear, I'm not claiming any of the above ideas as my own, just that they were buzzing round my head but often seemed at odds with most of what I could find around me, save a few fringe sources).
I really like the way Turchin writes and argues, and I think his ideas and thesis are great. Taking a scientific, data-driven approach to the social sciences is exactly what our world needs, and I would encourage all of my STEM-y friends to look at this because here is a way you can apply your vast skills and knowledge to answer questions about the way we live and exist that have otherwise seemed out of reach.
Aside, I think this book is a really enjoyable read because the topic (social collapse) is inherently interesting, and the data-driven approach means that many examples are considered, which makes this a fun, fast pace ride through humanity's most exciting chapters.
I was a little annoyed at the frequent references to Turchin's other book, Ultrasociety, only because I selfishly want this to stand alone, but I guess I'll go read Ultrasociety anyway, now, and it's hard begrudge the author for not wanting to explain himself twice.
Yeah, read this, I'll probably bore the shit out of you talking about it in the next months, anyway.
July 20, 2023
Years ago, I read Turchin's book, "Historical Dynamics,” in which he described his first attempts to bring mathematical modeling to human history. At the time, I was disappointed to find that the book contained no more than a collection of disjoint empirical models whose parameters had been adjusted to fit the data. There was no unified framework to bring all the disparate pieces together.
“End Times” was written twenty years after “Historical Dynamics”. The ad hoc models have been replaced by a system of coupled equations not unlike those used in other global models, though much simpler. Unfortunately, he spends little time discussing the models themselves. All the details are glossed over in one short chapter near the end of the book, and the interested reader is referred to the bibliography.
For most of the book he tries to convince the reader that he has found a unifying principle underlying human history: overproduction of elites leads to wealth inequality and societal crises. The problem with this principle is that he defines elites in terms of wealth, which turns his principle into a tautology: The overproduction of high-wealth individuals leads to wealth inequality and societal crises. I doubt many people would have any problem with that statement.
One point that I am sure many people will be taken aback by is his critique of what he calls the "Credentialed Class", i.e., people with advanced college degrees. Most people will be surprised to learn that Turchin believes the country suffers from an overproduction of STEM workers, doctors, lawyers, and economist which in turn will lead to widespread disillusion and form a fertile breeding ground for violent revolutionaries when these people find that their credentials failed to lift them into the high wealth class of their predecessors.
Most of the analysis in the book is not based upon mathematical modeling at all; rather, it it is an examination of the "crisis database" created by Turchin and his colleagues. Using the database, he provides a nice survey of the crises that befell previous societies when they failed to reduce wealth inequality voluntarily. Over and over again, the historical record shows that elites were routinely butchered when the masses suffered widespread immiseration.
In the end, Turchin’s main argument is that the US is in a crisis because it has produced too many elites (i.e., high-wealth individuals), and to get out of its current crisis, wealth inequality must be reduced. While I tend to agree with him on this point, I’m just not sure we needed cliodynamics to tell us that.
“End Times” was written twenty years after “Historical Dynamics”. The ad hoc models have been replaced by a system of coupled equations not unlike those used in other global models, though much simpler. Unfortunately, he spends little time discussing the models themselves. All the details are glossed over in one short chapter near the end of the book, and the interested reader is referred to the bibliography.
For most of the book he tries to convince the reader that he has found a unifying principle underlying human history: overproduction of elites leads to wealth inequality and societal crises. The problem with this principle is that he defines elites in terms of wealth, which turns his principle into a tautology: The overproduction of high-wealth individuals leads to wealth inequality and societal crises. I doubt many people would have any problem with that statement.
One point that I am sure many people will be taken aback by is his critique of what he calls the "Credentialed Class", i.e., people with advanced college degrees. Most people will be surprised to learn that Turchin believes the country suffers from an overproduction of STEM workers, doctors, lawyers, and economist which in turn will lead to widespread disillusion and form a fertile breeding ground for violent revolutionaries when these people find that their credentials failed to lift them into the high wealth class of their predecessors.
Most of the analysis in the book is not based upon mathematical modeling at all; rather, it it is an examination of the "crisis database" created by Turchin and his colleagues. Using the database, he provides a nice survey of the crises that befell previous societies when they failed to reduce wealth inequality voluntarily. Over and over again, the historical record shows that elites were routinely butchered when the masses suffered widespread immiseration.
In the end, Turchin’s main argument is that the US is in a crisis because it has produced too many elites (i.e., high-wealth individuals), and to get out of its current crisis, wealth inequality must be reduced. While I tend to agree with him on this point, I’m just not sure we needed cliodynamics to tell us that.
Read
April 5, 2024If you've read Asimov's Foundation series, you'd know psychohistory - the 'science' that predicts the future of humanity at large. Peter Turchin is on a similar path, though he does call out the underlying methodology of psychohistory as pseudoscience and in his version, attempts to do it with a lot of data and actual science. The field is cliodynamics, focusing on political integration and disintegration, and state formation and collapse. He and his colleagues have discovered recurring patterns in history over the last ten thousand years, and some common underlying principles on why this happens.
The book begins with a look at the sources of power and its correlation with wealth. The former is of at least four types - force, wealth, bureaucratic, and ideological. It then takes a quick look at contemporary America, and specifically the reasons for the rise of Trump. I found the parallels with the 1850s, Lincoln, and the Civil war that his election triggered, quite insightful. (it really wasn't just about slavery, the business and economic interests were the much broader canvas)
And how does this power dissipate? From his research, the lessons history teaches is that there are four structural drivers of instability - popular immiseration (impoverishment of the working class) leading to mass mobilisation potential; elite overproduction (too many elites vying for too few seats of power and wealth) leading to intraelite conflict; Failing fiscal health and weakened legitimacy of the state; and geopolitical factors. The second is the most reliable predictor.
With this context, he delves into each of these factors in the subsequent chapters. An interesting point in the popular immiseration is the impact of immigration - how it drives down wages because of the overabundance of labour. In the second- elite overproduction, he quotes Guy Standing on the so-called 'precariat'- "It consists of people who went to college, promised by their parents, teachers, and politicians that this will grant them a career. They soon realise they were sold a lottery ticket and come out without a future and with plenty of debt. This faction is dangerous in a more positive way. They are unlikely to support populists. But they also reject old conservative or social democratic political parties. Intuitively, they are looking for a new politics of paradise, which they do not see in the old political spectrum or in such bodies as trade unions." And David Callahan - "As the ranks of the affluent have swelled over the past two decades, so have the number of kids who receive every advantage in their education. The growing competition in turn, has compelled more parents to spend more money and cut more corners in an effort to give their children an extra edge. Nothing less than an academic arms race is unfolding within the upper sections of U.S. society. Yet even the most heroic - or sleazy - efforts don't guarantee a superior edge."
He then points to how the two parties in the US have moved away from their original audience and stance, and how ideological fragmentation has progressed so far that any classification has become impossible. And we're now dominated by radical politics. America is now a plutocracy - economic elites who are able to influence policy with its "structural economic power". The issues in which they are in disagreement with the common folks always get decided in the elites' favour. Plutocrats are able to create a vulnerability in democracies because they use their wealth to buy mass media, to fund think tanks, and handsomely reward those social influencers who promote their messages. A three part way of controlling public perceptions of practically anything! The chapter 'Why is America a plutocracy' also has an insightful section on why the US didn't turn out like Denmark despite being at roughly the same place at the beginning of the twentieth century.
In the last section, he looks at history to understand the possible outcomes for the US in the future- how the trajectory of post USSR Slavic states - Ukraine, Belarus - and Russia differed. He also goes further back to look at examples of states that have survived by taking measures to prevent collapse -
England in the Chartist period, Russia in the Reform period. In the US now, the Democratic Party is a now of the 10 percent and the 1 percent. And the 1 percent is losing its traditional vehicle - the Republican party, which is increasingly being taken over by right-wing populist factions. Once upon a time, American elites successfully adopted reforms to rebalance the social system. It's either that or they get overthrown.
While Turchin gets technical, the narrative is coherent and insightful. It also brings science to the many signs of decay we see around us. Overall, an excellent read, if you're interested in the broad subject.
Notes
1. George RR Martin based Lannisters in GoT on Lancasters in the 1400s
2. Just as physical contagions were a driver in empires collapsing, idea contagions are in today's environment (Arab Spring)
3. After the Civil War, there was Reconstruction, and then the Gilded Age (excess) followed by the Progressive Era (reforms). For two generations after the 1930s the elite proactively did things for improving the conditions of the masses, but from the 1980s, the concentration of wealth began again.
The book begins with a look at the sources of power and its correlation with wealth. The former is of at least four types - force, wealth, bureaucratic, and ideological. It then takes a quick look at contemporary America, and specifically the reasons for the rise of Trump. I found the parallels with the 1850s, Lincoln, and the Civil war that his election triggered, quite insightful. (it really wasn't just about slavery, the business and economic interests were the much broader canvas)
And how does this power dissipate? From his research, the lessons history teaches is that there are four structural drivers of instability - popular immiseration (impoverishment of the working class) leading to mass mobilisation potential; elite overproduction (too many elites vying for too few seats of power and wealth) leading to intraelite conflict; Failing fiscal health and weakened legitimacy of the state; and geopolitical factors. The second is the most reliable predictor.
With this context, he delves into each of these factors in the subsequent chapters. An interesting point in the popular immiseration is the impact of immigration - how it drives down wages because of the overabundance of labour. In the second- elite overproduction, he quotes Guy Standing on the so-called 'precariat'- "It consists of people who went to college, promised by their parents, teachers, and politicians that this will grant them a career. They soon realise they were sold a lottery ticket and come out without a future and with plenty of debt. This faction is dangerous in a more positive way. They are unlikely to support populists. But they also reject old conservative or social democratic political parties. Intuitively, they are looking for a new politics of paradise, which they do not see in the old political spectrum or in such bodies as trade unions." And David Callahan - "As the ranks of the affluent have swelled over the past two decades, so have the number of kids who receive every advantage in their education. The growing competition in turn, has compelled more parents to spend more money and cut more corners in an effort to give their children an extra edge. Nothing less than an academic arms race is unfolding within the upper sections of U.S. society. Yet even the most heroic - or sleazy - efforts don't guarantee a superior edge."
He then points to how the two parties in the US have moved away from their original audience and stance, and how ideological fragmentation has progressed so far that any classification has become impossible. And we're now dominated by radical politics. America is now a plutocracy - economic elites who are able to influence policy with its "structural economic power". The issues in which they are in disagreement with the common folks always get decided in the elites' favour. Plutocrats are able to create a vulnerability in democracies because they use their wealth to buy mass media, to fund think tanks, and handsomely reward those social influencers who promote their messages. A three part way of controlling public perceptions of practically anything! The chapter 'Why is America a plutocracy' also has an insightful section on why the US didn't turn out like Denmark despite being at roughly the same place at the beginning of the twentieth century.
In the last section, he looks at history to understand the possible outcomes for the US in the future- how the trajectory of post USSR Slavic states - Ukraine, Belarus - and Russia differed. He also goes further back to look at examples of states that have survived by taking measures to prevent collapse -
England in the Chartist period, Russia in the Reform period. In the US now, the Democratic Party is a now of the 10 percent and the 1 percent. And the 1 percent is losing its traditional vehicle - the Republican party, which is increasingly being taken over by right-wing populist factions. Once upon a time, American elites successfully adopted reforms to rebalance the social system. It's either that or they get overthrown.
While Turchin gets technical, the narrative is coherent and insightful. It also brings science to the many signs of decay we see around us. Overall, an excellent read, if you're interested in the broad subject.
Notes
1. George RR Martin based Lannisters in GoT on Lancasters in the 1400s
2. Just as physical contagions were a driver in empires collapsing, idea contagions are in today's environment (Arab Spring)
3. After the Civil War, there was Reconstruction, and then the Gilded Age (excess) followed by the Progressive Era (reforms). For two generations after the 1930s the elite proactively did things for improving the conditions of the masses, but from the 1980s, the concentration of wealth began again.
June 17, 2025
(The English review is placed beneath the Russian one)
Главной ценностью этой книги является то, что она заставляет читателя задуматься над поднятым автором вопросом. Как я понимаю, книга пытается убедить читателя в том, что предлагаемая автором теория является чуть ли не научным способом предсказания переворотов, т.е. ситуации, когда происходит удачная или не удачная попытка замены старой элиты на новую (смена элиты на контрэлиту). В связи с этим можно всп��мнить как удачные революции, т.е. когда старая элита была сметена новой так и не очень удачная, когда попытка переворота была подавлена.
По мысли автора или как я это понял, главным триггером является перепроизводство элит, т.е. когда дети, а потом и их внуки занимают все высшие позиции в стране. Возможно, тут уместно сказать, что перестаёт работать социальный лифт. Это, во-первых, а во-вторых, происходит сильное обнищание простого народа. На стыке этих двух явлений или благодаря их столкновению происходит появление третьего важного элемента – ��онтрэлит, т.е. людей, которые при нормально работающем социальном лифте заняли бы места во властной, бизнес или просто общественной иерархии, но из-за того что все места заняты детьми и внуками старой элиты, у новой элиты остаётся только один выход – физически ликвидировать старую элиту. Иногда старая элита ликвидируется войной, т.е. просто погибает во время войны или когда эмигрирует в отдалённые регионы империи. Но тогда возникает вопрос, почему же контрэлите не всегда удаётся победить в борьбе за власть? И вот тут-то мы как раз и вспоминает фактор обедневшего народа или народа, который себя так осознаёт (воспринимает). Если этого не происходит, то элиты просто уничтожают контрэлиту в силу малой поддержки со стороны простого народа. Но когда народ ощущает, что он поставлен старой элитой в отчаянное положение, образуется нужная поддержка политических взглядов контрэлиты и то, что ещё вчера разделялось меньшинством граждан, сегодня разделяется уже большинством, вследствие чего и происходит переворот или революция. Как я понял, это основа всей авторской теории. Далее, книга призвана, с помощью примеров, продемонстрировать правдивость всей теории.
Тут нужно подчеркнуть, что книга адресована, прежде всего, американцам, т.к. чуть ли не половина всей книги затрагивает либо исторические события, что произошли в США либо сегодняшнюю реальность в лице Трампа. По мысли автора, в США сегодня происходят именно эти явления, т.е. перепроизводство элит, обеднение общества и появления контрэлит в лице Трампа и пр., которые из маргиналов превращаются в мейнстрим. На это мне трудно что-то возразить, ибо я не готов утверждать, что в США перепроизводство элит так же как явное ухудшение жизни простых граждан. Чтобы делать подобные заявления нужно очень хорошо разбираться в таком специфическом вопросе.
Однако для граждан России важным является именно перепроизводство элит, когда все значимые положения в стране занимаются родственниками текущих представителей политической, экономической, военной и культурной элиты, не оставляя никаких возможностей всем остальным. Как мне кажется, именно это и начало происходить в России уже при Ельцине достигнув апогея при Путине (думаю, все знают, чьи дети какие директорские кресла занимают). Конфликт в Украине буквально взорвал вторую опору – благополучие простых россиян (хотя их благополучие неуклонно сокращалось на протяжении всех тех лет, начиная с 2008 года, особо ускорившись с 2014). Однако автор вместо того чтобы рассматривать именно этот вопрос, почему-то концентрируется на описании политических элит России, Украины и Белоруссии, включая объяснение событий на территории Украины в 2014 году. Тут тоже трудно мне судить, ибо я мало что знаю об украинской политической элите и не могу, как это делает автор, утверждать, что Украина чуть ли не в прямом смысле поделена между несколькими олигархами. Может мне это показалось, но я не особо заметил у автора осуждение путинской политики, даже скорее наоборот - утверждение, что, мол, в 2014 году на востоке Украины были проявления гражданской войны (гражданское сопротивление центру). Автор об этом говорит мельком, поэтому я не могу сейчас воспроизвести точные мысли по этому поводу. В любом случаи, автор не конкретен на счёт России и Путина.
The main value of this book is that it makes the reader think about the issue raised by the author. As I understand it, the book tries to convince the reader that the theory proposed by the author is almost a scientific way of predicting coups, i.e. a situation when there is a successful or unsuccessful attempt to replace the old elite with a new one (change of the elite with the counter-elite). In this regard, we can recall both successful revolutions, i.e., when the old elite was swept away by the new elite, and not very successful ones when the coup attempt was suppressed.
According to the author, or as I understood it, the main trigger is the overproduction of elites, i.e. when children and then their grandchildren occupy all the top positions in the country. Perhaps it is appropriate to say here that the social elevator stops working. This, firstly, and secondly, there is a strong impoverishment of ordinary people. At the intersection of these two phenomena or due to their collision, a third important element appears - counter-elites, i.e. people who, if the social elevator worked properly, would take places in the power, business, or simply social hierarchy, but because all the places are occupied by children and grandchildren of the old elite, the new elite has only one way out - physically eliminate the old elite. Sometimes the old elite is eliminated by war, i.e. it simply dies during the war or when it emigrates to remote regions of the empire. But then the question arises: why the counter-elite does not always manage to win the struggle for power? And this is where the factor of impoverished people or people who perceive themselves as such comes to mind. If this does not happen, the elites simply destroy the counter-elite due to low support from the common people. But when the people feel that they are put in a desperate situation by the old elite, the necessary support of the counter-elite is formed, and what was shared by a minority of citizens yesterday is now shared by the majority which is why a coup or revolution takes place. As I understood, this is the basis of the author's theory. Further, the book is intended to demonstrate the truthfulness of the theory by means of examples.
It should be emphasized that the book is addressed primarily to Americans since almost half of the book touches on either historical events that took place in the U.S. or the current reality (Trump). In the author's opinion, these very phenomena are taking place in the USA today, i.e. overproduction of elites, impoverishment of society, and the emergence of counter-elites in the person of Trump, etc., who are turning from marginal to mainstream. It is difficult for me to object to this because I am not ready to say that in the USA there is an overproduction of elites as well as a clear deterioration in the lives of ordinary citizens. To make such statements, you need to be very well-versed in such a specific issue.
However, it is the overproduction of elites that is important for Russian citizens, when all significant positions in the country are occupied by relatives of the current representatives of the political, economic, military, and cultural elite, leaving no opportunities for everyone else. It seems to me, that this is exactly what started happening in Russia already under Yeltsin and reached its peak under Putin (I think everyone knows whose children occupy which director's chairs). The conflict in Ukraine blew up the second pillar - the well-being of ordinary Russians (although their well-being has been steadily declining throughout all those years, starting in 2008, especially accelerating in 2014). However, the author, instead of addressing this very issue, for some reason focuses on describing the political elites of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus, including an explanation of the events in Ukraine in 2014. Here, too, it is difficult for me to judge, for I know little about the Ukrainian political elite and cannot, as the author does, claim that Ukraine is almost literally divided among several oligarchs. Maybe it seemed to me, but I did not particularly notice the author's condemnation of Putin's policy, even rather the opposite - the statement that, say, in 2014 in the east of Ukraine there were manifestations of civil war (civil resistance to the center). The author speaks about this in passing, so I cannot reproduce his exact thoughts on the matter. In any case, the author is not specific about Russia and Putin.
Главной ценностью этой книги является то, что она заставляет читателя задуматься над поднятым автором вопросом. Как я понимаю, книга пытается убедить читателя в том, что предлагаемая автором теория является чуть ли не научным способом предсказания переворотов, т.е. ситуации, когда происходит удачная или не удачная попытка замены старой элиты на новую (смена элиты на контрэлиту). В связи с этим можно всп��мнить как удачные революции, т.е. когда старая элита была сметена новой так и не очень удачная, когда попытка переворота была подавлена.
По мысли автора или как я это понял, главным триггером является перепроизводство элит, т.е. когда дети, а потом и их внуки занимают все высшие позиции в стране. Возможно, тут уместно сказать, что перестаёт работать социальный лифт. Это, во-первых, а во-вторых, происходит сильное обнищание простого народа. На стыке этих двух явлений или благодаря их столкновению происходит появление третьего важного элемента – ��онтрэлит, т.е. людей, которые при нормально работающем социальном лифте заняли бы места во властной, бизнес или просто общественной иерархии, но из-за того что все места заняты детьми и внуками старой элиты, у новой элиты остаётся только один выход – физически ликвидировать старую элиту. Иногда старая элита ликвидируется войной, т.е. просто погибает во время войны или когда эмигрирует в отдалённые регионы империи. Но тогда возникает вопрос, почему же контрэлите не всегда удаётся победить в борьбе за власть? И вот тут-то мы как раз и вспоминает фактор обедневшего народа или народа, который себя так осознаёт (воспринимает). Если этого не происходит, то элиты просто уничтожают контрэлиту в силу малой поддержки со стороны простого народа. Но когда народ ощущает, что он поставлен старой элитой в отчаянное положение, образуется нужная поддержка политических взглядов контрэлиты и то, что ещё вчера разделялось меньшинством граждан, сегодня разделяется уже большинством, вследствие чего и происходит переворот или революция. Как я понял, это основа всей авторской теории. Далее, книга призвана, с помощью примеров, продемонстрировать правдивость всей теории.
Тут нужно подчеркнуть, что книга адресована, прежде всего, американцам, т.к. чуть ли не половина всей книги затрагивает либо исторические события, что произошли в США либо сегодняшнюю реальность в лице Трампа. По мысли автора, в США сегодня происходят именно эти явления, т.е. перепроизводство элит, обеднение общества и появления контрэлит в лице Трампа и пр., которые из маргиналов превращаются в мейнстрим. На это мне трудно что-то возразить, ибо я не готов утверждать, что в США перепроизводство элит так же как явное ухудшение жизни простых граждан. Чтобы делать подобные заявления нужно очень хорошо разбираться в таком специфическом вопросе.
Однако для граждан России важным является именно перепроизводство элит, когда все значимые положения в стране занимаются родственниками текущих представителей политической, экономической, военной и культурной элиты, не оставляя никаких возможностей всем остальным. Как мне кажется, именно это и начало происходить в России уже при Ельцине достигнув апогея при Путине (думаю, все знают, чьи дети какие директорские кресла занимают). Конфликт в Украине буквально взорвал вторую опору – благополучие простых россиян (хотя их благополучие неуклонно сокращалось на протяжении всех тех лет, начиная с 2008 года, особо ускорившись с 2014). Однако автор вместо того чтобы рассматривать именно этот вопрос, почему-то концентрируется на описании политических элит России, Украины и Белоруссии, включая объяснение событий на территории Украины в 2014 году. Тут тоже трудно мне судить, ибо я мало что знаю об украинской политической элите и не могу, как это делает автор, утверждать, что Украина чуть ли не в прямом смысле поделена между несколькими олигархами. Может мне это показалось, но я не особо заметил у автора осуждение путинской политики, даже скорее наоборот - утверждение, что, мол, в 2014 году на востоке Украины были проявления гражданской войны (гражданское сопротивление центру). Автор об этом говорит мельком, поэтому я не могу сейчас воспроизвести точные мысли по этому поводу. В любом случаи, автор не конкретен на счёт России и Путина.
The main value of this book is that it makes the reader think about the issue raised by the author. As I understand it, the book tries to convince the reader that the theory proposed by the author is almost a scientific way of predicting coups, i.e. a situation when there is a successful or unsuccessful attempt to replace the old elite with a new one (change of the elite with the counter-elite). In this regard, we can recall both successful revolutions, i.e., when the old elite was swept away by the new elite, and not very successful ones when the coup attempt was suppressed.
According to the author, or as I understood it, the main trigger is the overproduction of elites, i.e. when children and then their grandchildren occupy all the top positions in the country. Perhaps it is appropriate to say here that the social elevator stops working. This, firstly, and secondly, there is a strong impoverishment of ordinary people. At the intersection of these two phenomena or due to their collision, a third important element appears - counter-elites, i.e. people who, if the social elevator worked properly, would take places in the power, business, or simply social hierarchy, but because all the places are occupied by children and grandchildren of the old elite, the new elite has only one way out - physically eliminate the old elite. Sometimes the old elite is eliminated by war, i.e. it simply dies during the war or when it emigrates to remote regions of the empire. But then the question arises: why the counter-elite does not always manage to win the struggle for power? And this is where the factor of impoverished people or people who perceive themselves as such comes to mind. If this does not happen, the elites simply destroy the counter-elite due to low support from the common people. But when the people feel that they are put in a desperate situation by the old elite, the necessary support of the counter-elite is formed, and what was shared by a minority of citizens yesterday is now shared by the majority which is why a coup or revolution takes place. As I understood, this is the basis of the author's theory. Further, the book is intended to demonstrate the truthfulness of the theory by means of examples.
It should be emphasized that the book is addressed primarily to Americans since almost half of the book touches on either historical events that took place in the U.S. or the current reality (Trump). In the author's opinion, these very phenomena are taking place in the USA today, i.e. overproduction of elites, impoverishment of society, and the emergence of counter-elites in the person of Trump, etc., who are turning from marginal to mainstream. It is difficult for me to object to this because I am not ready to say that in the USA there is an overproduction of elites as well as a clear deterioration in the lives of ordinary citizens. To make such statements, you need to be very well-versed in such a specific issue.
However, it is the overproduction of elites that is important for Russian citizens, when all significant positions in the country are occupied by relatives of the current representatives of the political, economic, military, and cultural elite, leaving no opportunities for everyone else. It seems to me, that this is exactly what started happening in Russia already under Yeltsin and reached its peak under Putin (I think everyone knows whose children occupy which director's chairs). The conflict in Ukraine blew up the second pillar - the well-being of ordinary Russians (although their well-being has been steadily declining throughout all those years, starting in 2008, especially accelerating in 2014). However, the author, instead of addressing this very issue, for some reason focuses on describing the political elites of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus, including an explanation of the events in Ukraine in 2014. Here, too, it is difficult for me to judge, for I know little about the Ukrainian political elite and cannot, as the author does, claim that Ukraine is almost literally divided among several oligarchs. Maybe it seemed to me, but I did not particularly notice the author's condemnation of Putin's policy, even rather the opposite - the statement that, say, in 2014 in the east of Ukraine there were manifestations of civil war (civil resistance to the center). The author speaks about this in passing, so I cannot reproduce his exact thoughts on the matter. In any case, the author is not specific about Russia and Putin.
June 17, 2025
doing my part to prevent elite overproduction by never making enough money to be considered an elite.
August 19, 2023
Finished this a few weeks ago, but didnt want to post my review until it went live elsewhere first.
While I remain skeptical about just how positivistic you can make the humanities, Turchin does some of the best and most convincing work in this regard. It also jives very well with my own observations as someone who has been studying world history on the macro scale since I was a teen.
See my full review here:
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/...
While I remain skeptical about just how positivistic you can make the humanities, Turchin does some of the best and most convincing work in this regard. It also jives very well with my own observations as someone who has been studying world history on the macro scale since I was a teen.
See my full review here:
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/...
June 27, 2024
Lay oriented overview of Turchins model of history
with no math or rigorous breakdown of theories.
with no math or rigorous breakdown of theories.
August 25, 2023
This is a great book, and very good for understanding the underlying reasons for the contemporary problems we’re having with our polarized, plutocratic society. Will the USA survive to 2026? How can we deal with social conflict and disorder? Why does it seem to be worsening? We have to look at the underlying causes of social conflict in scientific terms, and to discover that, you look at history, with actual data!
This is well-written and much more understandable for ordinary people than his other books, such as Secular Cycles and Ages of Discord, which were also excellent but very academic. Since we’re currently experiencing a lot of social disruption lately, his analysis is right to the point of much of our current political experience. The upshot, for Turchin, is that inequality as the key driver of social disruption and the potential disintegration of the United States. Turchin’s ideas often echo those of Marx, but he is not a Marxist and in fact approaches the data dispassionately, as a scientist.
There are two things about Turchin’s ideas which stand out. First, the role of the elites in growing inequality; and secondly, the relative absence of environmental issues in our growing crisis.
The elites drive inequality. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. But this does NOT mechanically cause a revolution. In fact, the “masses” almost never succeed at a revolution as long as the elites are united, no matter how oppressed they are. To have a revolution, you need to get organized; to get organized, you need resources — but the elites have all the resources. So there are echoes of Lenin, also, who stressed that the masses will never rise up, without a revolutionary party to help out.
It is disaffected elites, not the masses, who propel social disruption. It is inevitable, by the way, that there will be disaffected elites, as Turchin explains. The elites bring about the social crises which he describes. The elites use their power, naturally enough, to get more power and money. So, the rich get richer. So far, so good — for the elites, anyway. Sorry about your declining living standards, oppressed masses. In fact, the oppression of the masses actually HELPS the elites further, because of declining labor costs, and therefore even greater profits.
But this encourages “elite aspirants”— people who are not quite elites, but who are encouraged with all this increasing wealth to imagine themselves as getting in on the action. You, too, could be a millionaire! This is the process of what Turchin calls “elite overproduction.”
This works for a while, but in the long run, this doesn’t work out well for the elites, as you might guess. As the number of elites increase, and more and more people try to get in on the action, many will inevitably fail. So there are also an increasing number of elites, as well as frustrated elites. This is the process of “elite overproduction” — too many people competing for a limited number of elite positions, whether that’s Supreme Court justice, business CEO, or whatever.
But as the power of the elites increases, we also have the second dynamic: the poor get poorer, or “popular immiseration.” So the peasants, workers, or common people are also becoming poorer and more frustrated. Suicide, alcoholism, drug addiction, etc. increase. This decline in real wages means that it is easier for elites to make more money (labor is now cheaper) so the elites do nothing about it.
This has two results: as the poor get poorer, the “mobilization potential” of the masses increases. Some rabble-rouser, a frustrated counter-elite, will be able to “stir up trouble.” This would not necessarily be left-wing, by the way — Trump is the perfect example of a right-wing counter-elite. Second result, state revenues decline as the tax base shrinks (the poor can’t pay as much in taxes). Therefore, popular immiseration + elite over-production + frustrated counter-elites + weakening state = conflict.
There you have it. The only real solution is to eliminate some of the elites; there are just too many of them. You can do this peacefully, or not so peacefully. You choose. There is a crisis period, with winners and losers among the elite aspirants. The only sure thing is that the number of elites will decrease. This is what we saw during the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, the English Civil war, etc.
So where does the environment figure into all this? We think of our social disruption as due to declining environment, peak oil, climate change, etc. Turchin never discusses this in depth in any of his books. It’s too bad, because he could do this in the context of his theory.
It’s really related to “population pressure on resources” — which he does allude to briefly, but then drops the subject in Ages of Discord. He gives the example of 17th century England, where this cycle was stopped due to increasing agricultural productivity. This meant that population could grow, living standards could rise, and NOT result in “popular immiseration” and elite over-production. But now, with environmental decline, peak oil, climate, etc., we have the same process working in reverse. Even with no increase in population, living standards would decline, resulting in lower labor costs (= lower wages!) and rising elite opportunities.
In Turchin’s defense, so far our social disorder seems to be mostly triggered by the inequality dynamic, not the environmental decline dynamic. But still I think he’s missing a key piece which actually supports his theory because environmental decline will actually accelerate the process of social disorder and disintegration. Turchin has done a very good job and let’s hope that he gets the attention he deserves so that we can focus on what, in objective terms, is a vital topic in understanding how we can get to a more peaceful and happy society.
This is well-written and much more understandable for ordinary people than his other books, such as Secular Cycles and Ages of Discord, which were also excellent but very academic. Since we’re currently experiencing a lot of social disruption lately, his analysis is right to the point of much of our current political experience. The upshot, for Turchin, is that inequality as the key driver of social disruption and the potential disintegration of the United States. Turchin’s ideas often echo those of Marx, but he is not a Marxist and in fact approaches the data dispassionately, as a scientist.
There are two things about Turchin’s ideas which stand out. First, the role of the elites in growing inequality; and secondly, the relative absence of environmental issues in our growing crisis.
The elites drive inequality. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. But this does NOT mechanically cause a revolution. In fact, the “masses” almost never succeed at a revolution as long as the elites are united, no matter how oppressed they are. To have a revolution, you need to get organized; to get organized, you need resources — but the elites have all the resources. So there are echoes of Lenin, also, who stressed that the masses will never rise up, without a revolutionary party to help out.
It is disaffected elites, not the masses, who propel social disruption. It is inevitable, by the way, that there will be disaffected elites, as Turchin explains. The elites bring about the social crises which he describes. The elites use their power, naturally enough, to get more power and money. So, the rich get richer. So far, so good — for the elites, anyway. Sorry about your declining living standards, oppressed masses. In fact, the oppression of the masses actually HELPS the elites further, because of declining labor costs, and therefore even greater profits.
But this encourages “elite aspirants”— people who are not quite elites, but who are encouraged with all this increasing wealth to imagine themselves as getting in on the action. You, too, could be a millionaire! This is the process of what Turchin calls “elite overproduction.”
This works for a while, but in the long run, this doesn’t work out well for the elites, as you might guess. As the number of elites increase, and more and more people try to get in on the action, many will inevitably fail. So there are also an increasing number of elites, as well as frustrated elites. This is the process of “elite overproduction” — too many people competing for a limited number of elite positions, whether that’s Supreme Court justice, business CEO, or whatever.
But as the power of the elites increases, we also have the second dynamic: the poor get poorer, or “popular immiseration.” So the peasants, workers, or common people are also becoming poorer and more frustrated. Suicide, alcoholism, drug addiction, etc. increase. This decline in real wages means that it is easier for elites to make more money (labor is now cheaper) so the elites do nothing about it.
This has two results: as the poor get poorer, the “mobilization potential” of the masses increases. Some rabble-rouser, a frustrated counter-elite, will be able to “stir up trouble.” This would not necessarily be left-wing, by the way — Trump is the perfect example of a right-wing counter-elite. Second result, state revenues decline as the tax base shrinks (the poor can’t pay as much in taxes). Therefore, popular immiseration + elite over-production + frustrated counter-elites + weakening state = conflict.
There you have it. The only real solution is to eliminate some of the elites; there are just too many of them. You can do this peacefully, or not so peacefully. You choose. There is a crisis period, with winners and losers among the elite aspirants. The only sure thing is that the number of elites will decrease. This is what we saw during the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, the English Civil war, etc.
So where does the environment figure into all this? We think of our social disruption as due to declining environment, peak oil, climate change, etc. Turchin never discusses this in depth in any of his books. It’s too bad, because he could do this in the context of his theory.
It’s really related to “population pressure on resources” — which he does allude to briefly, but then drops the subject in Ages of Discord. He gives the example of 17th century England, where this cycle was stopped due to increasing agricultural productivity. This meant that population could grow, living standards could rise, and NOT result in “popular immiseration” and elite over-production. But now, with environmental decline, peak oil, climate, etc., we have the same process working in reverse. Even with no increase in population, living standards would decline, resulting in lower labor costs (= lower wages!) and rising elite opportunities.
In Turchin’s defense, so far our social disorder seems to be mostly triggered by the inequality dynamic, not the environmental decline dynamic. But still I think he’s missing a key piece which actually supports his theory because environmental decline will actually accelerate the process of social disorder and disintegration. Turchin has done a very good job and let’s hope that he gets the attention he deserves so that we can focus on what, in objective terms, is a vital topic in understanding how we can get to a more peaceful and happy society.
May 6, 2025
Peter Turchin, a Russian-American who studied biological systems for half his life and pivoted to social systems, shows us how he applies the power of big data and statistics to governance systems and defines a scientific historical discipline that he calls cliodynamics (from Clio, the muse of history to the Greeks). Apparently there is a lot of debate about history and science and whether human behaviors can really be modeled at the societal level from which theories can then be tested and validated (i.e. whether the scientific method can be applied to history). In this book he presents the method, gives us a narrated introduction (calling on Presidents Trump, Lincoln and Emperor Hang), makes a history of crises in different societies throughout history and presents us with the state of affairs (in the United States, but what he says fits equally well with what is happening here and in the rest of the civilized world).
In short, he says that almost all crises occur when two main factors come together, the overproduction of the elites and the decline in the standard of living. That's all folks!
Case study, The United States: power in the United States is conferred by money (the author openly says that the USA is a plutocracy, which is better than a kleptocracy like in Romania, but not by much) and there is a strong correlation between political power and wealth there (politicians who have reached public office usually retire rich). So the elites are those with money who want an important status in society (the educated have the same problem) – see Trump, but there are not enough positions that confer power for how many elites there are (same, there are not enough positions in higher education for how many PhDs come out of universities). The second problem is that, even though the average income in the US has increased, the median income, that is, the household in the 65th million place out of the 130 million households, adjusted for inflation, has been continuously decreasing since 2008. So even though some have colossal fortunes, the average American is increasingly poorer. And the overproduction of elites gives rise to counter-elites, those who want to reach positions of power by changing the rules of the game instead of using the available mechanisms, and the dissatisfaction of the population makes this change in the rules of the game possible because they are more open to change. (sound familiar? TikTok, zero campaign funds, etc.?)
In the historical part, the author shows how other crisis situations unfolded (revolutions, civil wars, replacements of elites) while, in the solutions part, he stops at 19th-century Russia, which avoided the wave of revolutions in Europe (1848 and others) and the USA during the New Deal period, post-1930 and post-WW2. Those moments were spared from bad events because the elites agreed (so he tells us) to endure some losses for the time being so that the state mechanism would not be completely destabilized. Probably, in fact, many other circumstances influenced the events, and his story is just a way of extrapolating some solutions from the data he has. Also so that the book is not too pessimistic. These did not quite convince me. What convinced me, however, is the existence of a more or less accentuated crisis in many corners of the world, which will continue to intensify and, in the near future, may break somewhere.
Throughout the book, an idea kept eating at me: the psychohistory of Hari Seldon from Asimov's Foundation. And Turchin mentions this similarity, but explains that Asimov imagined the discipline before scientists and mathematicians developed chaos theory (Chaos, by James Gleick was written in 1987 but is super fun, if you're interested) and provided evidence that psychohistory, as Asimov imagined it, cannot work. But he also mentions an influence, In the Country of the Blind, by Michael Flynn (with the adage “... the one eyed man is king”) in which Charles Babbage actually builds the analytical engine, and members of The Babbage Society lay the foundations of Cliology, also a predictive science.
I got excited by Asimov's psychohistory when I read Foundation and I kinda feel the same for Turchin's cliodynamics now. I guess we’ll have to wait and see what kind of predictive power this is going to have and if anything at all can be done about this.
In short, he says that almost all crises occur when two main factors come together, the overproduction of the elites and the decline in the standard of living. That's all folks!
Case study, The United States: power in the United States is conferred by money (the author openly says that the USA is a plutocracy, which is better than a kleptocracy like in Romania, but not by much) and there is a strong correlation between political power and wealth there (politicians who have reached public office usually retire rich). So the elites are those with money who want an important status in society (the educated have the same problem) – see Trump, but there are not enough positions that confer power for how many elites there are (same, there are not enough positions in higher education for how many PhDs come out of universities). The second problem is that, even though the average income in the US has increased, the median income, that is, the household in the 65th million place out of the 130 million households, adjusted for inflation, has been continuously decreasing since 2008. So even though some have colossal fortunes, the average American is increasingly poorer. And the overproduction of elites gives rise to counter-elites, those who want to reach positions of power by changing the rules of the game instead of using the available mechanisms, and the dissatisfaction of the population makes this change in the rules of the game possible because they are more open to change. (sound familiar? TikTok, zero campaign funds, etc.?)
In the historical part, the author shows how other crisis situations unfolded (revolutions, civil wars, replacements of elites) while, in the solutions part, he stops at 19th-century Russia, which avoided the wave of revolutions in Europe (1848 and others) and the USA during the New Deal period, post-1930 and post-WW2. Those moments were spared from bad events because the elites agreed (so he tells us) to endure some losses for the time being so that the state mechanism would not be completely destabilized. Probably, in fact, many other circumstances influenced the events, and his story is just a way of extrapolating some solutions from the data he has. Also so that the book is not too pessimistic. These did not quite convince me. What convinced me, however, is the existence of a more or less accentuated crisis in many corners of the world, which will continue to intensify and, in the near future, may break somewhere.
Throughout the book, an idea kept eating at me: the psychohistory of Hari Seldon from Asimov's Foundation. And Turchin mentions this similarity, but explains that Asimov imagined the discipline before scientists and mathematicians developed chaos theory (Chaos, by James Gleick was written in 1987 but is super fun, if you're interested) and provided evidence that psychohistory, as Asimov imagined it, cannot work. But he also mentions an influence, In the Country of the Blind, by Michael Flynn (with the adage “... the one eyed man is king”) in which Charles Babbage actually builds the analytical engine, and members of The Babbage Society lay the foundations of Cliology, also a predictive science.
I got excited by Asimov's psychohistory when I read Foundation and I kinda feel the same for Turchin's cliodynamics now. I guess we’ll have to wait and see what kind of predictive power this is going to have and if anything at all can be done about this.
Read
December 22, 2024Feels like Malthusian nonsense, but I need a better sense of his methods. This was neither enough tell nor enough show.
Maybe an interesting research question: historically, popular immiseration was tied to population booms. However, as birth rates decline (everywhere), it seems that this could also result in popular immiseration, as traditional social safety nets lose their working base. How does this fit in?
Additionally, this book argues in favor of restricting immigration to keep wages high for citizens (a long-held Bernie argument that not a lot of progressives are keen to acknowledge). This leads to unpleasant conclusions. If overpopulation leads to popular immiseration, and immigration (the escape valve for overpopulation) also leads to immiseration, what do we do with these excess people?
Also would’ve liked to see more discussion of Popper’s argument, which he mentions, that we cannot predict the future, because the future is dependent on scientific progress we cannot yet imagine.
TLDR: my vibes are largely skeptical post-read, but maybe a better understanding of the math behind the scenes would dampen this skepticism.
Maybe an interesting research question: historically, popular immiseration was tied to population booms. However, as birth rates decline (everywhere), it seems that this could also result in popular immiseration, as traditional social safety nets lose their working base. How does this fit in?
Additionally, this book argues in favor of restricting immigration to keep wages high for citizens (a long-held Bernie argument that not a lot of progressives are keen to acknowledge). This leads to unpleasant conclusions. If overpopulation leads to popular immiseration, and immigration (the escape valve for overpopulation) also leads to immiseration, what do we do with these excess people?
Also would’ve liked to see more discussion of Popper’s argument, which he mentions, that we cannot predict the future, because the future is dependent on scientific progress we cannot yet imagine.
TLDR: my vibes are largely skeptical post-read, but maybe a better understanding of the math behind the scenes would dampen this skepticism.
Read
July 16, 2024idk fam i feel like i shouldn’t say i’m not smart enough to understand this book so perhaps i shall say i lacked the necessary background knowledge to fully get it. i mean i think i know a lot of stuff but this book kinda made me feel like i don’t. but i liked the part when eisenhower said of people who are anti- social security and labor laws, “they are stupid.”
November 3, 2024
Decent. It’s smart in places and outright weird in others. Turchin strikes me as the type of academic who everybody thinks is crazy, and he wears that stigma as a symbol of pride, but he lowkey has some interesting thoughts.
August 14, 2023
Mehhhh!
En corto. Cuando emergen de un sistema social, constantemente actualizado, individuos élites pero no hay suficientes “lugares” de poder los cuales puedan ocupar, o sea, es más la demanda de estos lugares que la oferta, entonces, se causa una sobrepoblación específica donde, debido a las inevitables peleas por esas plazas, por individuos o grupos élite, el mundo se convierte en una pugna encarnizada sí o sí. Estas élites son las que cambian, para bien o para mal, a la sociedad entera.
Este cambio y forma de llegar a ser élite (o un grupo con poder) es extremadamente agresivo y sus movimientos, a los ojos de los de menor jerarquía (que se lleguen a enterar), hacen que los califiquen como violentos, sanguinarios, malvados, siniestrillos y hasta místicos wu-wu, etc, pues todo lo que hacen y causan es impersonal para toda la estructura jerárquica que crean y “acarrean” mientras se encuentren en la máxima posición. La forma en que esto se vuelve muy personal es cuando estás en el mismo nivel social pero tienes un rival, todo lo demás, como está mencionado en el libro, es impersonal, haciendo que toda la estructura del sistema haga que la mayoría ni sepa, en verdad, por qué hace lo que hace para sobrevivir (tener/hacer su sentido diario). Ejemplos hay muchísimos pero de bote pronto, estos… tú piensas que las decisiones “racionales” y “educadas” que formaste y “has tomado” en tu mentecilla “actualizada” (hehehe) de 1. “no voy a tener hijos en esta época” o 2. “escoger pareja” o 3. criar a tu hijo “de la mejor manera” o 4. "Escoger profesión” o 5. "defender lo que más quieres" o 6. “me gustan más los perros” ¿son realmente tuyas?... en donde lo opuesto (o variaciones) de cada uno de estos ejemplillos al sistema le resulta LO MISMO, no cambia el resultado de producción mientras te venda$, nos vendamo$ y consumamo$ dentro de mercados (más su carga ideológica, que es, en sí, lo que nos proporciona sentido sobre “todo lo posiblemente comprensible (consumible)”, lo cual, en éstas épocas: es nuestra demanda de/por consumo. Consumo ¿de qué? ah pues de TODO “lo mejor” percibido por las élites donde habitas (que son las que te ofrecen lo que consumes) lo cual hace que tú desees lo mismo pero en esteróides, lo cual causa una estructura peor que poseer, el desear es mucho más ughh!, cómo decirlo, profundo que el hecho de tener/ser, desear corroe más en un estado sin control que controlado, siendo así la venta y consumo de nosotros mismos y nuestro output, lo que nos hace caer en el territorio controlado(able) (no es que sea completamente malo, pero, si lo ves así, ya no se espera nada de ti más allá de tu output y consumo regular, tu tan planeada “vida adulta”). Sheeesh, de hecho, crees que esta mentecilla que te acompaña y “te hace escoger” (hahaha) entre el espectro que te "has" formado del bien y el mal ¿es tuya, tuya-tuya? hahahaha.
(NOTA: De cierta manera, ¡ojalá y pienses en el fondo que sí eres dueño absoluto de tu mente! porque eso te evita problemas internos y externos que al menos te pueden hacer sentir vértigo. Aveces siento que ser (o hacerse) idiota-correoso es una ventaja anti-cancerígena o al menos, anti-suicida en la actualidad, si es que no has desarrollado una adicción antes para al menos mantenerte “sano/sana” VS tu día-a-día.
Esta necesidad de ser adicto a una variedad innovadora de “cosas” (ofrecidas por el mercado) tanto en los que se drogan diariamente en las coladeras como los que se drogan en un malls brillosos comprando “calzones” de $10,000 USD los fines de semana en diferentes culturas. El de la coladera como el del mall una vez tienen la adicción y se auto convencen de que lo que hacen es justificado (no la adicción, sino lo que la hace emerger, hehe, el día-a-día) entonces: ¡todo va bien! Lo que está mal no es el consumo sino cuando ya liberas dopamina de adicción para “estar bien” porque, tal vez, sólo, tal vez, en el fondo, ya no hay/tienes significado verdadero o una estructura correcta la cual te permite superar cualquier mercado, moda, cultura, lenguaje o dolor.
Es necesaria mucha más humildad para reconocer que (intentando hacer una comparación) no eres ni el dueño “del mercado”, ni de “la carnicería”, ni de “la carne” que ahí se expone, vende y fija sobre ti un precio que parece siempre inferior a lo que crees que vales, pero de hecho no, sólo respondes al mercado donde habitas y a la carne que tú mismo comes. No es malo ni bueno… es. Hay unos quienes comen lo mejor de lo mejor (y más tierno, spooky, dependiendo el contexto) y otros que comen lo necesario a como “su” día-a-día les exige, la diferencia entre estos dos polos es brutal socialmente y, se potencializa porque no importa la situación en que te encuentres pues, deseas más permanentemente o al menos conservar el mejor de los infiernos. En éste ejemplo y espectro, hay unos que ni carne comen y mueren más rápido o hay lugares en donde se imprime “carne artificial de soya”, o unos que inventan estados mentales, para “habitar” en ellos y negar convenientemente que tienen un cuerpo con necesidades programadas específicas (ADN, epigenética) que les hacen comer "carne" quieran, o no.
¡Hey! Al menos, entre otros, no muchos, pero, los artistas (derivado de la palabra Arte y no fama) y los comediantes (de nuevo, no famosos, sino Artistas) se salvan de esta pugna/cambio social de las élites y, mientras producen el arte (emergente de la propia percepción de la sociedad en que habitan), sobre aquello que observan, o posan su consciencia, se salvan por unos momentos a ellos mismos y, con ellos, a todos los que pueden acceder a la perspectiva de su arte, de su talento, mientras se expone. Me acordé de George Carlin, de Caravaggio, Bach, Huxley y otros que son lo suficientemente sensibles para señalar dolores y sus 10,000 máscaras.
Regresando, qué flojera escuchar, una vez más, de todo esto… pero bueno, alguien tiene que hacerlo (que bueno que no soy yo)... a grandes rasgos, antes era el esclavo/feudal, después “el proletariado” (esto ha tenido muchos nombres siempre, depende la élite emergente de la cultura dominante se decide quien es “el bueno” o “malo” para sus intenciones cambiantes) y ahora, en estos tiempos, “ya se dieron cuenta”, hahaha, que “son (de hecho) las élites y sus cambios” uuuuuu que mieeeedo, hahahaha, en sí, la humanidad como una parte del fractal evolutivo al que puede ser conciente de, al que corresponde (sistemas donde interactúa en su complejidad) sólo pueden hacer que nos comportemos conforme a nuestra naturaleza más básica representada y actuada en nuestros modelillos de percepción/acción (de un animal social: cultura) en cualquier época, algo así como, devora lo que te nutre, acumula sin pensarlo dos veces y reprodúcete cuantas veces puedas little bunny (causando el orden social y competencias emergentes de siempre), si te das cuenta de esta verdad que pre-condiciona nuestra propia existencia, una verdad absoluta, entonces, inmediatamente verás que como casi nadie sabe siquiera la diferencia entre 1. qué es apto para “comer” y qué no, o 2. cómo puedo alimentarme, y acumular, en una sociedad del 2023 si sólo soy un humano más, con el fin de reproducirme, entonces, a) SI ERES élite, puedes decidir quién se puede sentar a tu mesa y crear una “casa”, con todo lo que necesitas para los que habitan ahí puedan lograr todo y la “defiendan” el élite se hace de lealtad adherida (esbirros), hasta que alguien, interno o foráneo no le gusten tus pareceres y/o encuentre algo más “nutritivo” (mejor), lo administre socializando con los que mejor le caen y entonces b)la “mesa” va a intentar cambiarse a una “nueva casa” (frente a tus ojos) a lo cual se responde con agresividad a.k.a. mismos juegos de siempre... ad infinitum donde, debido a esta naturaleza primigenia, estamos obligados a encerrarnos en un loop de sentidos de sin-sentidos, de defensivas y ofensivas brutales, en donde, todo se justifica si se ve desde la perspectiva social más primordial, algo así como... cualquier individuo, de mí misma clase, habitante de este sistema, es alguien “bueno” hasta que “brinca” a un nivel de élite superior, entonces se puede negociar su bondad dependiendo de cómo me beneficia personalmente. Repito, los que están en tu “clase” son “los buenos”… los de “arriba” de ti son “malos” y “místicos” (a los que hay que quitar) y los que están “abajo” bueno, más te vale siempre y por default que los consideres como mártires sin nombre (una vez que “subes”), jajajajaja, si es que quieres que no te apaleen (más bien, devoren) cuando estés “sobre” ellos porque, claro está, como regla no escrita… si estás arriba… “es por mi y todos nosotros” (dirían ellos), hahahaha, y tarde o temprano, van a querer cobrarlo de la forma en que “el mercado” se entiende más fácilmente: devorar la “carne mala” justificado por los ojos de todos. Ooof, cuidado con todo esto, porque todos estamos jugando (tu hermano, tu tío, tu vecino, el financiero, el guerrero, tu madre, etc) a que no tenemos hambre y, de hecho "nunca la tuvimos" y por este pensamiento diariamente (muchos) mueren y muchos otros, de hecho, ni han venido a nacer cuando en sí tenía que haber sucedido. Bueno, en sí, ¿quién soy yo para pensar estas cosas?
Como humanidad nos hemos dado cuenta de esto en el pasado y ha quedado como advertencia en nuestra cultura oral, literatura y demás artes en todos lados ya que son Verdades que se han observado desde la antigüedad, eso no significa caducas, sino que son válidas aquí y también mañana. Dentro de este contexto, hace sentido algo como lo siguiente, fuera de promover religiones:
Mateo 22:39
"Y el segundo es semejante: Amarás a tu prójimo como a ti mismo."
En comparación lo que se practica ahora es:
“La familia, es primero.” (No wonder).
Amor verdadero por todo, sin influencias, prejuicios, sin pre-programación comercial más que tu corazón (si es que lo llegas a conocer, a tu corazón), bueno... eso es tan raro pero, TAN RARO... que de verdad se ve menos que una estrella fugaz y lo más seguro es que nunca lo veas porque no sabemos ni quién, ni lo que somos.
Continuando, el ser élite comienza en la inocencia de una familia sana y con un espectro inocente, hasta que emerge el contacto con su naturaleza social y pierde (bye, bye innocence), con esto, al inicio… si puedes retener en la cabeza que puedes “tener/ser” algo que te causará mejoría, una vez que lo logres (esperanza), entonces, ya comenzaste, muchos nunca llegaron a tener siquiera eso, así, automáticamente están excluidos de la competencia, nunca podrían participar en ninguna jerarquía de sentido social (poder) porque ni siquiera la comprenden, vienen a servir. La esperanza es el principio de esto donde pareciera inofensiva y deseable, pero, de esta manera y más rápido que lento, se va manifestando, como ponía antes, su naturaleza, donde repentinamente te encontrarás con que querrás retener los frutos de la esperanza (y no la esperanza en sí misma: inocencia) todo el tiempo que puedas con las personas más allegadas y queridas (adheridos). Ahora, si esta posición social la has mantenido por generaciones significa que sabes tener relaciones con los iguales a tí dentro de tu cultura, los superiores y los inferiores, cosa muy difícil de lograr, has mantenido positivamente relaciones con los superiores haciéndoles “creer” que no les harás nada, a los “inferiores” haciéndoles creer que “no te alimentas de ellos” y a los que son iguales que tú… bueno, con esos son los que practicas los 7 pecados capitales (que estén de moda en tu cultura) para unirse en un ethos de “igualdad” y “hermandad”, haha! estabilidad y neutralidad.
¡Hay, ya!… blah-blah-blah... se puede decir tanto de esto.
Es más rápido estudiar acerca de primates, los chimpancés son sorprendentes y súper parecidos a nosotros, después Maquiavelo y después guerra, poder, psicología y sociología. Lo demás como mi apunte y éste mismo libro intenta hacer es blah-blah-blah de Bar, blah-blah-blah de opiniones educadas o de “modelos ultra avanzados y predictivos de think-tanks”... en fin, como dije, todo sucumbe siempre a la realidad, no hay computadora o interpretación que pueda reproducir para re-interpretar, mediante observaciones profesionales a la realidad misma, o repitiéndolo todo y más fácil: blah-blah-blah.
Punto final, los que tratan de hacer sentido de todo esto, generalmente, son fatalistas… me desesperan mucho porque siempre según ellos no podríamos haber llegado a donde estamos de ninguna manera (dígase el espectro total de Estados Unidos de América en el mundo (que va más allá que el contorno del país)) con todo y sus fallas. Por qué digo esto, porque algo que sí tengo seguro es no querer, de nuevo, algún emperador, de ningún tipo ni de ninguna religión, eso es regresar a algo mucho peor pero con poderes inimaginables (fusión/fisión del átomo, alteración del ADN e inteligencia artificial) si la tenemos difícil ahora, ésto, pero con un sistema social más primitivo sería una muerte masiva segura.
Citas:
1.
“Although not everybody has ambition to acquire more power, there are always more aspirants than power positions.”
NOTA:
-A lo que digo, no ambición… pero sí envidia: el copy/paste de la creación de algo y renombrarlo a tu conveniencia (John Milton y su Paradise Lost pueden aclarar mucho esto que quiero exponer).
-Las escuelas no fueron lo mismo pre-segunda guerra mundial, y post-segunda guerra mundial aunque la pregunta a las élites, para las dos épocas, sería ¿qué “individuos” querían producir en su sociedad? Y, como siempre, la Verdad (qué es a lo que se debería apuntar en cada clase, para cada individuo, nos la cepillamos según quien esté diseñando la perpetuidad (acumulación) de la élite de su pueblo, en donde, no sólo es cuidadosamente programado el sistema para ubicarte en una fábrica, los que lo “viven” (los de abajo) lo van a defender a muerte pues es SU ethos, hahahaha, sin eso no tienen nada (no sabrían ni qué comer).
2.
“In game theory, a branch of mathematics that studies strategic interactions, the players must devise winning strategies within
the given rules. But in real life, people bend rules all the time.”
NOTA: Cheating.
3.
“Immiserated masses generate raw energy, while a cadre of counter-elites provides an organization to channel that energy against the ruling class.”
NOTA:
-Esta es “la chance” de subir, o provocar “tu subida”, si es que la ves, se te deja ver y estar participando en ello.
-Actualmente, eres counter-elite si tienes, haces y has hecho todo lo que un élite, pero no “se te asignó” un lugar de poder, entonces… porque “divinamente” has pagado lo que se tiene que pagar para acceder a “lo mejor de lo mejor” (definido por la sociedad que te formó) pelearás/an por ese “derecho divino” (de hecho no hay escapatoria) y eso te hace inmediatamente un counter-elite. También puedes dar un golpe de estado de cualquier tipo, en cualquier momento, y cosas similares dependiendo de la creatividad del que quiera hacerse con el poder, pero en general, los counter emergen de la misma élite.
4.
“As the ranks of the affluent have swelled over the past two decades, so have the number of kids who receive every advantage in their education. The growing competition, in turn, has compelled more parents to spend more money and cut more corners in an effort to give their children an extra edge. Nothing less than an academic arms race is unfolding within the upper tiers of U.S. society. Yet even the most heroic—or sleazy—efforts don’t guarantee a superior edge.”
5.
Una de las cosas MÁS IMPORTANTES A ENTENDER, no se ve ni siquiera en este libro, es la siguiente cita y el fondo de ella. No la escuche de Turchin sino de Eric Weinstein:
“This social contract began to break down in the late 1970s. As a consequence, typical workers’ wages, which had previously increased in tandem with overall economic growth, started to lag behind. Worse, real wages stagnated and at times even decreased. The result was a decline in many aspects of quality of life for most of the American population.”
NOTA: Con esto el mundo puede ver su suerte ya que es el copy/paste de lo que sucede en el West (principalmente Estados Unidos) pero en pirata.
Ahhh… se me olvidaba, a todo esto sumándole que somos individuos emocionales y que respondemos mejor al amor que a otra cosa conocida artificial o no artificial, de verdad estamos metidos en un problemota muy triste.
Todo eso más que estamos a la víspera de:
- Inteligencia Artificial (✓) esto provoca una singularidad... lástima que el término no sea comprendido en su acepción de física, repito, una s.i.n.g.u.l.a.r.i.d.a.d. (qué miedo).
- Pinshis aliens (✓)
- Cambios climáticos extremos, julio 2023 estuvo de la sh*t, (✓)
- Todavía les falta describir la Nada y cuando te asalta, en mushishi lo describen bien pero tampoco saben qué es.
- Las migraciones masivas (✓).
- Extremismos (✓)
- Alteración del ciclo del agua (✓)
- Intensificación del Niño y la Niña, haciendo que las corrientes marítimas se alteren (✓)
- Haberle dado cuchillos a los niños con Internet (✓)
- Sociedades que apoyan, racional o irracionalmente, aquellas pre-condiciones que causan al final del día: Guerra, revueltas o discordias en el sistema (✓)
- Corrupción (✓)(✓)
- Problemas con el abastecimiento de alimentos y fertilizantes (✓)
- Moral Warriors de radicalismos de moda (✓)(✓)
- Desempleo (✓)
- Meaning Crisis (✓)
- Tráfico de humanos, especialmente infantes (✓)(✓)
- Recordar que todo lo objetivo, de toda esta lista (y los millones de puntos que faltan), emergió de la subjetividad humana, economía, política, geografía, complejidad... nuestra mentecilla es la que crea todo esto ANTES de que pase en la “realidad” o lo que eso signifique, a lo que voy es que Tenemos jodido el cerebro en nuestras culturas debido a cómo nos hemos conducido y una vez que entra a nuestro campo de consciencia y le damos tiempo de pensamiento diario… pues check (✓)
-----------
Ah, para más fácil, si no se sabe reconocer al mal eterno existente, que actúa sobre todo pues es
"nuestra" naturaleza (si no se combate), éste post de Scott Alexander y el video, que es lo mismo, lo describen excelentemente o, al menos, te lo aclara. De esto lo que me da miedo es que hay muchos que les tienes que decir "¡NO VEAS EL DEDO! ¡VE LO QUE SEÑALA EL DEDO! : ¡LA LUNA!" y de todas formas te van a decir "sí, ya veo... ¡la lúnula!, yo también teeeengooooo".
(Antes de esto si se puede leer historia de la economía, ¡qué mejor!)
Love (forgiveness) and charity.
En corto. Cuando emergen de un sistema social, constantemente actualizado, individuos élites pero no hay suficientes “lugares” de poder los cuales puedan ocupar, o sea, es más la demanda de estos lugares que la oferta, entonces, se causa una sobrepoblación específica donde, debido a las inevitables peleas por esas plazas, por individuos o grupos élite, el mundo se convierte en una pugna encarnizada sí o sí. Estas élites son las que cambian, para bien o para mal, a la sociedad entera.
Este cambio y forma de llegar a ser élite (o un grupo con poder) es extremadamente agresivo y sus movimientos, a los ojos de los de menor jerarquía (que se lleguen a enterar), hacen que los califiquen como violentos, sanguinarios, malvados, siniestrillos y hasta místicos wu-wu, etc, pues todo lo que hacen y causan es impersonal para toda la estructura jerárquica que crean y “acarrean” mientras se encuentren en la máxima posición. La forma en que esto se vuelve muy personal es cuando estás en el mismo nivel social pero tienes un rival, todo lo demás, como está mencionado en el libro, es impersonal, haciendo que toda la estructura del sistema haga que la mayoría ni sepa, en verdad, por qué hace lo que hace para sobrevivir (tener/hacer su sentido diario). Ejemplos hay muchísimos pero de bote pronto, estos… tú piensas que las decisiones “racionales” y “educadas” que formaste y “has tomado” en tu mentecilla “actualizada” (hehehe) de 1. “no voy a tener hijos en esta época” o 2. “escoger pareja” o 3. criar a tu hijo “de la mejor manera” o 4. "Escoger profesión” o 5. "defender lo que más quieres" o 6. “me gustan más los perros” ¿son realmente tuyas?... en donde lo opuesto (o variaciones) de cada uno de estos ejemplillos al sistema le resulta LO MISMO, no cambia el resultado de producción mientras te venda$, nos vendamo$ y consumamo$ dentro de mercados (más su carga ideológica, que es, en sí, lo que nos proporciona sentido sobre “todo lo posiblemente comprensible (consumible)”, lo cual, en éstas épocas: es nuestra demanda de/por consumo. Consumo ¿de qué? ah pues de TODO “lo mejor” percibido por las élites donde habitas (que son las que te ofrecen lo que consumes) lo cual hace que tú desees lo mismo pero en esteróides, lo cual causa una estructura peor que poseer, el desear es mucho más ughh!, cómo decirlo, profundo que el hecho de tener/ser, desear corroe más en un estado sin control que controlado, siendo así la venta y consumo de nosotros mismos y nuestro output, lo que nos hace caer en el territorio controlado(able) (no es que sea completamente malo, pero, si lo ves así, ya no se espera nada de ti más allá de tu output y consumo regular, tu tan planeada “vida adulta”). Sheeesh, de hecho, crees que esta mentecilla que te acompaña y “te hace escoger” (hahaha) entre el espectro que te "has" formado del bien y el mal ¿es tuya, tuya-tuya? hahahaha.
(NOTA: De cierta manera, ¡ojalá y pienses en el fondo que sí eres dueño absoluto de tu mente! porque eso te evita problemas internos y externos que al menos te pueden hacer sentir vértigo. Aveces siento que ser (o hacerse) idiota-correoso es una ventaja anti-cancerígena o al menos, anti-suicida en la actualidad, si es que no has desarrollado una adicción antes para al menos mantenerte “sano/sana” VS tu día-a-día.
Esta necesidad de ser adicto a una variedad innovadora de “cosas” (ofrecidas por el mercado) tanto en los que se drogan diariamente en las coladeras como los que se drogan en un malls brillosos comprando “calzones” de $10,000 USD los fines de semana en diferentes culturas. El de la coladera como el del mall una vez tienen la adicción y se auto convencen de que lo que hacen es justificado (no la adicción, sino lo que la hace emerger, hehe, el día-a-día) entonces: ¡todo va bien! Lo que está mal no es el consumo sino cuando ya liberas dopamina de adicción para “estar bien” porque, tal vez, sólo, tal vez, en el fondo, ya no hay/tienes significado verdadero o una estructura correcta la cual te permite superar cualquier mercado, moda, cultura, lenguaje o dolor.
Es necesaria mucha más humildad para reconocer que (intentando hacer una comparación) no eres ni el dueño “del mercado”, ni de “la carnicería”, ni de “la carne” que ahí se expone, vende y fija sobre ti un precio que parece siempre inferior a lo que crees que vales, pero de hecho no, sólo respondes al mercado donde habitas y a la carne que tú mismo comes. No es malo ni bueno… es. Hay unos quienes comen lo mejor de lo mejor (y más tierno, spooky, dependiendo el contexto) y otros que comen lo necesario a como “su” día-a-día les exige, la diferencia entre estos dos polos es brutal socialmente y, se potencializa porque no importa la situación en que te encuentres pues, deseas más permanentemente o al menos conservar el mejor de los infiernos. En éste ejemplo y espectro, hay unos que ni carne comen y mueren más rápido o hay lugares en donde se imprime “carne artificial de soya”, o unos que inventan estados mentales, para “habitar” en ellos y negar convenientemente que tienen un cuerpo con necesidades programadas específicas (ADN, epigenética) que les hacen comer "carne" quieran, o no.
¡Hey! Al menos, entre otros, no muchos, pero, los artistas (derivado de la palabra Arte y no fama) y los comediantes (de nuevo, no famosos, sino Artistas) se salvan de esta pugna/cambio social de las élites y, mientras producen el arte (emergente de la propia percepción de la sociedad en que habitan), sobre aquello que observan, o posan su consciencia, se salvan por unos momentos a ellos mismos y, con ellos, a todos los que pueden acceder a la perspectiva de su arte, de su talento, mientras se expone. Me acordé de George Carlin, de Caravaggio, Bach, Huxley y otros que son lo suficientemente sensibles para señalar dolores y sus 10,000 máscaras.
Regresando, qué flojera escuchar, una vez más, de todo esto… pero bueno, alguien tiene que hacerlo (que bueno que no soy yo)... a grandes rasgos, antes era el esclavo/feudal, después “el proletariado” (esto ha tenido muchos nombres siempre, depende la élite emergente de la cultura dominante se decide quien es “el bueno” o “malo” para sus intenciones cambiantes) y ahora, en estos tiempos, “ya se dieron cuenta”, hahaha, que “son (de hecho) las élites y sus cambios” uuuuuu que mieeeedo, hahahaha, en sí, la humanidad como una parte del fractal evolutivo al que puede ser conciente de, al que corresponde (sistemas donde interactúa en su complejidad) sólo pueden hacer que nos comportemos conforme a nuestra naturaleza más básica representada y actuada en nuestros modelillos de percepción/acción (de un animal social: cultura) en cualquier época, algo así como, devora lo que te nutre, acumula sin pensarlo dos veces y reprodúcete cuantas veces puedas little bunny (causando el orden social y competencias emergentes de siempre), si te das cuenta de esta verdad que pre-condiciona nuestra propia existencia, una verdad absoluta, entonces, inmediatamente verás que como casi nadie sabe siquiera la diferencia entre 1. qué es apto para “comer” y qué no, o 2. cómo puedo alimentarme, y acumular, en una sociedad del 2023 si sólo soy un humano más, con el fin de reproducirme, entonces, a) SI ERES élite, puedes decidir quién se puede sentar a tu mesa y crear una “casa”, con todo lo que necesitas para los que habitan ahí puedan lograr todo y la “defiendan” el élite se hace de lealtad adherida (esbirros), hasta que alguien, interno o foráneo no le gusten tus pareceres y/o encuentre algo más “nutritivo” (mejor), lo administre socializando con los que mejor le caen y entonces b)la “mesa” va a intentar cambiarse a una “nueva casa” (frente a tus ojos) a lo cual se responde con agresividad a.k.a. mismos juegos de siempre... ad infinitum donde, debido a esta naturaleza primigenia, estamos obligados a encerrarnos en un loop de sentidos de sin-sentidos, de defensivas y ofensivas brutales, en donde, todo se justifica si se ve desde la perspectiva social más primordial, algo así como... cualquier individuo, de mí misma clase, habitante de este sistema, es alguien “bueno” hasta que “brinca” a un nivel de élite superior, entonces se puede negociar su bondad dependiendo de cómo me beneficia personalmente. Repito, los que están en tu “clase” son “los buenos”… los de “arriba” de ti son “malos” y “místicos” (a los que hay que quitar) y los que están “abajo” bueno, más te vale siempre y por default que los consideres como mártires sin nombre (una vez que “subes”), jajajajaja, si es que quieres que no te apaleen (más bien, devoren) cuando estés “sobre” ellos porque, claro está, como regla no escrita… si estás arriba… “es por mi y todos nosotros” (dirían ellos), hahahaha, y tarde o temprano, van a querer cobrarlo de la forma en que “el mercado” se entiende más fácilmente: devorar la “carne mala” justificado por los ojos de todos. Ooof, cuidado con todo esto, porque todos estamos jugando (tu hermano, tu tío, tu vecino, el financiero, el guerrero, tu madre, etc) a que no tenemos hambre y, de hecho "nunca la tuvimos" y por este pensamiento diariamente (muchos) mueren y muchos otros, de hecho, ni han venido a nacer cuando en sí tenía que haber sucedido. Bueno, en sí, ¿quién soy yo para pensar estas cosas?
Como humanidad nos hemos dado cuenta de esto en el pasado y ha quedado como advertencia en nuestra cultura oral, literatura y demás artes en todos lados ya que son Verdades que se han observado desde la antigüedad, eso no significa caducas, sino que son válidas aquí y también mañana. Dentro de este contexto, hace sentido algo como lo siguiente, fuera de promover religiones:
Mateo 22:39
"Y el segundo es semejante: Amarás a tu prójimo como a ti mismo."
En comparación lo que se practica ahora es:
“La familia, es primero.” (No wonder).
Amor verdadero por todo, sin influencias, prejuicios, sin pre-programación comercial más que tu corazón (si es que lo llegas a conocer, a tu corazón), bueno... eso es tan raro pero, TAN RARO... que de verdad se ve menos que una estrella fugaz y lo más seguro es que nunca lo veas porque no sabemos ni quién, ni lo que somos.
Continuando, el ser élite comienza en la inocencia de una familia sana y con un espectro inocente, hasta que emerge el contacto con su naturaleza social y pierde (bye, bye innocence), con esto, al inicio… si puedes retener en la cabeza que puedes “tener/ser” algo que te causará mejoría, una vez que lo logres (esperanza), entonces, ya comenzaste, muchos nunca llegaron a tener siquiera eso, así, automáticamente están excluidos de la competencia, nunca podrían participar en ninguna jerarquía de sentido social (poder) porque ni siquiera la comprenden, vienen a servir. La esperanza es el principio de esto donde pareciera inofensiva y deseable, pero, de esta manera y más rápido que lento, se va manifestando, como ponía antes, su naturaleza, donde repentinamente te encontrarás con que querrás retener los frutos de la esperanza (y no la esperanza en sí misma: inocencia) todo el tiempo que puedas con las personas más allegadas y queridas (adheridos). Ahora, si esta posición social la has mantenido por generaciones significa que sabes tener relaciones con los iguales a tí dentro de tu cultura, los superiores y los inferiores, cosa muy difícil de lograr, has mantenido positivamente relaciones con los superiores haciéndoles “creer” que no les harás nada, a los “inferiores” haciéndoles creer que “no te alimentas de ellos” y a los que son iguales que tú… bueno, con esos son los que practicas los 7 pecados capitales (que estén de moda en tu cultura) para unirse en un ethos de “igualdad” y “hermandad”, haha! estabilidad y neutralidad.
¡Hay, ya!… blah-blah-blah... se puede decir tanto de esto.
Es más rápido estudiar acerca de primates, los chimpancés son sorprendentes y súper parecidos a nosotros, después Maquiavelo y después guerra, poder, psicología y sociología. Lo demás como mi apunte y éste mismo libro intenta hacer es blah-blah-blah de Bar, blah-blah-blah de opiniones educadas o de “modelos ultra avanzados y predictivos de think-tanks”... en fin, como dije, todo sucumbe siempre a la realidad, no hay computadora o interpretación que pueda reproducir para re-interpretar, mediante observaciones profesionales a la realidad misma, o repitiéndolo todo y más fácil: blah-blah-blah.
Punto final, los que tratan de hacer sentido de todo esto, generalmente, son fatalistas… me desesperan mucho porque siempre según ellos no podríamos haber llegado a donde estamos de ninguna manera (dígase el espectro total de Estados Unidos de América en el mundo (que va más allá que el contorno del país)) con todo y sus fallas. Por qué digo esto, porque algo que sí tengo seguro es no querer, de nuevo, algún emperador, de ningún tipo ni de ninguna religión, eso es regresar a algo mucho peor pero con poderes inimaginables (fusión/fisión del átomo, alteración del ADN e inteligencia artificial) si la tenemos difícil ahora, ésto, pero con un sistema social más primitivo sería una muerte masiva segura.
Citas:
1.
“Although not everybody has ambition to acquire more power, there are always more aspirants than power positions.”
NOTA:
-A lo que digo, no ambición… pero sí envidia: el copy/paste de la creación de algo y renombrarlo a tu conveniencia (John Milton y su Paradise Lost pueden aclarar mucho esto que quiero exponer).
-Las escuelas no fueron lo mismo pre-segunda guerra mundial, y post-segunda guerra mundial aunque la pregunta a las élites, para las dos épocas, sería ¿qué “individuos” querían producir en su sociedad? Y, como siempre, la Verdad (qué es a lo que se debería apuntar en cada clase, para cada individuo, nos la cepillamos según quien esté diseñando la perpetuidad (acumulación) de la élite de su pueblo, en donde, no sólo es cuidadosamente programado el sistema para ubicarte en una fábrica, los que lo “viven” (los de abajo) lo van a defender a muerte pues es SU ethos, hahahaha, sin eso no tienen nada (no sabrían ni qué comer).
2.
“In game theory, a branch of mathematics that studies strategic interactions, the players must devise winning strategies within
the given rules. But in real life, people bend rules all the time.”
NOTA: Cheating.
3.
“Immiserated masses generate raw energy, while a cadre of counter-elites provides an organization to channel that energy against the ruling class.”
NOTA:
-Esta es “la chance” de subir, o provocar “tu subida”, si es que la ves, se te deja ver y estar participando en ello.
-Actualmente, eres counter-elite si tienes, haces y has hecho todo lo que un élite, pero no “se te asignó” un lugar de poder, entonces… porque “divinamente” has pagado lo que se tiene que pagar para acceder a “lo mejor de lo mejor” (definido por la sociedad que te formó) pelearás/an por ese “derecho divino” (de hecho no hay escapatoria) y eso te hace inmediatamente un counter-elite. También puedes dar un golpe de estado de cualquier tipo, en cualquier momento, y cosas similares dependiendo de la creatividad del que quiera hacerse con el poder, pero en general, los counter emergen de la misma élite.
4.
“As the ranks of the affluent have swelled over the past two decades, so have the number of kids who receive every advantage in their education. The growing competition, in turn, has compelled more parents to spend more money and cut more corners in an effort to give their children an extra edge. Nothing less than an academic arms race is unfolding within the upper tiers of U.S. society. Yet even the most heroic—or sleazy—efforts don’t guarantee a superior edge.”
5.
Una de las cosas MÁS IMPORTANTES A ENTENDER, no se ve ni siquiera en este libro, es la siguiente cita y el fondo de ella. No la escuche de Turchin sino de Eric Weinstein:
“This social contract began to break down in the late 1970s. As a consequence, typical workers’ wages, which had previously increased in tandem with overall economic growth, started to lag behind. Worse, real wages stagnated and at times even decreased. The result was a decline in many aspects of quality of life for most of the American population.”
NOTA: Con esto el mundo puede ver su suerte ya que es el copy/paste de lo que sucede en el West (principalmente Estados Unidos) pero en pirata.
Ahhh… se me olvidaba, a todo esto sumándole que somos individuos emocionales y que respondemos mejor al amor que a otra cosa conocida artificial o no artificial, de verdad estamos metidos en un problemota muy triste.
Todo eso más que estamos a la víspera de:
- Inteligencia Artificial (✓) esto provoca una singularidad... lástima que el término no sea comprendido en su acepción de física, repito, una s.i.n.g.u.l.a.r.i.d.a.d. (qué miedo).
- Pinshis aliens (✓)
- Cambios climáticos extremos, julio 2023 estuvo de la sh*t, (✓)
- Todavía les falta describir la Nada y cuando te asalta, en mushishi lo describen bien pero tampoco saben qué es.
- Las migraciones masivas (✓).
- Extremismos (✓)
- Alteración del ciclo del agua (✓)
- Intensificación del Niño y la Niña, haciendo que las corrientes marítimas se alteren (✓)
- Haberle dado cuchillos a los niños con Internet (✓)
- Sociedades que apoyan, racional o irracionalmente, aquellas pre-condiciones que causan al final del día: Guerra, revueltas o discordias en el sistema (✓)
- Corrupción (✓)(✓)
- Problemas con el abastecimiento de alimentos y fertilizantes (✓)
- Moral Warriors de radicalismos de moda (✓)(✓)
- Desempleo (✓)
- Meaning Crisis (✓)
- Tráfico de humanos, especialmente infantes (✓)(✓)
- Recordar que todo lo objetivo, de toda esta lista (y los millones de puntos que faltan), emergió de la subjetividad humana, economía, política, geografía, complejidad... nuestra mentecilla es la que crea todo esto ANTES de que pase en la “realidad” o lo que eso signifique, a lo que voy es que Tenemos jodido el cerebro en nuestras culturas debido a cómo nos hemos conducido y una vez que entra a nuestro campo de consciencia y le damos tiempo de pensamiento diario… pues check (✓)
-----------
Ah, para más fácil, si no se sabe reconocer al mal eterno existente, que actúa sobre todo pues es
"nuestra" naturaleza (si no se combate), éste post de Scott Alexander y el video, que es lo mismo, lo describen excelentemente o, al menos, te lo aclara. De esto lo que me da miedo es que hay muchos que les tienes que decir "¡NO VEAS EL DEDO! ¡VE LO QUE SEÑALA EL DEDO! : ¡LA LUNA!" y de todas formas te van a decir "sí, ya veo... ¡la lúnula!, yo también teeeengooooo".
(Antes de esto si se puede leer historia de la economía, ¡qué mejor!)
Love (forgiveness) and charity.
June 12, 2025
I’m typically sceptical of any “grand theory of history” and have my doubts as to the predictive power of Turchin’s models, but I still think this is an essential read for anybody who wants to wrap their heads around the chaos we’re experiencing today.
The author’s use of anecdotes to explain the perspective of different players in society is perhaps the best part of this book. It’s very easy to tar opponents as ‘deplorable’, ‘deluded’, ‘selfish’, ‘woke’, etc, but life in reality is not that simple. Most people have their reasons for believing what they believe.
Whether or not his models turn out to be accurate, his diagnosis of society’s ’wealth pump’ and takedown of ‘real wages’ as a proxy for prosperity certainly aligns with what I see in the UK at the moment. It doesn’t take a genius level intellect to see that there have been clear winners and losers in the past fifty years, and that those losers might be inclined to turn to political extremes, especially if they’re gaslit with statistics telling them “actually, everything is fine”.
Overall I’d say this is well worth a read.
The author’s use of anecdotes to explain the perspective of different players in society is perhaps the best part of this book. It’s very easy to tar opponents as ‘deplorable’, ‘deluded’, ‘selfish’, ‘woke’, etc, but life in reality is not that simple. Most people have their reasons for believing what they believe.
Whether or not his models turn out to be accurate, his diagnosis of society’s ’wealth pump’ and takedown of ‘real wages’ as a proxy for prosperity certainly aligns with what I see in the UK at the moment. It doesn’t take a genius level intellect to see that there have been clear winners and losers in the past fifty years, and that those losers might be inclined to turn to political extremes, especially if they’re gaslit with statistics telling them “actually, everything is fine”.
Overall I’d say this is well worth a read.
July 10, 2023
If you’re at all interested in how our current system of capitalism is no good, this is a pretty good book. Peter Turchin has been researching this stuff for years, and basically, he has a theory that history sort of repeats itself and the overproduction of ultra-wealthy elites is no good. Over time, the overproduction of elites creates anger and hostility in the lower classes, but then, even upper-class people start to realize they’re getting screwed over, and then they want to burn down society as well. This ends up leading to revolutions and all sorts of bad things.
My issues with the book are once again personal ones. I’m not a major fan of history books, and there’s an insane amount of history in here. Also, in the beginning, Turchin states that he’ll touch on other countries slightly but not much. I’d say the majority of the book is the history of how this has happened in other countries outside of the United States.
It also felt like at the beginning of the book, Turchin put a lot of effort into making the book digestible for the average reader. He did a great job with that, but then it changes about halfway through. As the book progresses, it gets into a lot more academic language that the average person won’t be a fan of.
Overall, it’s a decent book. I think it could have been a bit shorter as it just kind of starts giving more examples of the same. The book then wraps up nicely with some potential solutions.
My issues with the book are once again personal ones. I’m not a major fan of history books, and there’s an insane amount of history in here. Also, in the beginning, Turchin states that he’ll touch on other countries slightly but not much. I’d say the majority of the book is the history of how this has happened in other countries outside of the United States.
It also felt like at the beginning of the book, Turchin put a lot of effort into making the book digestible for the average reader. He did a great job with that, but then it changes about halfway through. As the book progresses, it gets into a lot more academic language that the average person won’t be a fan of.
Overall, it’s a decent book. I think it could have been a bit shorter as it just kind of starts giving more examples of the same. The book then wraps up nicely with some potential solutions.
August 3, 2024
I found this interesting but it's the kind of book you could write on a napkin, really. The thesis is that severe wealth inequality creates the conditions for political instability. Turchin posits that turning on the "wealth pump" whereby the wealthy extract more resources from the masses causes popular "immiseration" creating the conditions for populist movements, while also leading to over-production of elites (through enrichment lifting commoners into their ranks, or allowing increased birth rates due to economic surplus), and more elites means more competition for slots and the conversion of some into counter-elites who lead the masses to tear it all down when they don't end up on top. In its broad form, sure, this smells right. Turchin also casts cold water on the ability of any society to dodge this mechanism, which, yes, sure, also with you.
The pause for me is at Turchin's claims for the scientific bona fides of his "cliodynamics." While he goes to great pains in an appendix to distance himself from his obvious fictional antecedent of psychohistory, the shade of Hari Seldon hovers a little too closely here. While Turchin is happy to poo-poo other thinkers' efforts to derive a science of history, he claims his is the real deal. I remain... unconvinced. While the database of historical records he and his colleagues have created sounds promising, at no point did he persuade me that he's avoided the thorny questions of quantification that plague such an effort, much less that he can satisfy standards of replicability that science requires. One good example is his account of late 19th-century Russia, which he claims avoided the crisis that rampant inequality could have caused. However, it's pretty hard to say they succeeded given the ongoing political violence of the period, culminating in 1917. While Turchin pays lip service to the "Bed of Procrustes" that comes from slicing the historical record as needed to fit one's theory, I don't believe he's gotten out of that bed yet himself.
If you can set the scientific puffery aside, there's some interesting stuff in here. Seeking a systems-theory-informed tool to understand historical cycles is most welcome. I liked some of his case studies in applying his approach to various historical and contemporary sociopolitical crises. I was also intrigued by his efforts to nail down some objective proxies for variables like "popular immiseration," such as average height. He has a pretty keen eye for how counter-elites threaten the existing order, although insanely, he never uses any variation of the term "demagogue" in the entire book! There's also some dated (and icky) appreciation for Tucker Carlson as prophet of populism; although Turchin mostly follows a leftist approach, he's willing to step back from the left-right divide to credit anyone viewing these dynamics through a class-based (not necessarily Marxist) lens.
While I would recommend this as a noble effort to get some critical distance on the troubling periodicity of violence in human societies, keep your salt shaker handy. Once you zoom in a little closer, some of the beautiful theoretical clarity blurs considerably.
The pause for me is at Turchin's claims for the scientific bona fides of his "cliodynamics." While he goes to great pains in an appendix to distance himself from his obvious fictional antecedent of psychohistory, the shade of Hari Seldon hovers a little too closely here. While Turchin is happy to poo-poo other thinkers' efforts to derive a science of history, he claims his is the real deal. I remain... unconvinced. While the database of historical records he and his colleagues have created sounds promising, at no point did he persuade me that he's avoided the thorny questions of quantification that plague such an effort, much less that he can satisfy standards of replicability that science requires. One good example is his account of late 19th-century Russia, which he claims avoided the crisis that rampant inequality could have caused. However, it's pretty hard to say they succeeded given the ongoing political violence of the period, culminating in 1917. While Turchin pays lip service to the "Bed of Procrustes" that comes from slicing the historical record as needed to fit one's theory, I don't believe he's gotten out of that bed yet himself.
If you can set the scientific puffery aside, there's some interesting stuff in here. Seeking a systems-theory-informed tool to understand historical cycles is most welcome. I liked some of his case studies in applying his approach to various historical and contemporary sociopolitical crises. I was also intrigued by his efforts to nail down some objective proxies for variables like "popular immiseration," such as average height. He has a pretty keen eye for how counter-elites threaten the existing order, although insanely, he never uses any variation of the term "demagogue" in the entire book! There's also some dated (and icky) appreciation for Tucker Carlson as prophet of populism; although Turchin mostly follows a leftist approach, he's willing to step back from the left-right divide to credit anyone viewing these dynamics through a class-based (not necessarily Marxist) lens.
While I would recommend this as a noble effort to get some critical distance on the troubling periodicity of violence in human societies, keep your salt shaker handy. Once you zoom in a little closer, some of the beautiful theoretical clarity blurs considerably.
March 11, 2024
Peter Turchin is a study of "cliodynamics," the philosophy that says history can be examined in a quantified way that explains past events, refines predictions, and generally explains how and why major historical changes have happened and will happen.
He's a smart and thoughtful historian and largely a good writer, so the book sometimes feels very convincing. He makes some very important points: in particular, his whole analysis of "counter-elites," basically people who have been led to believe that through education, or military service, or some other means, they will be accepted into the elite class. However, when there are too many of them (think Ph.D.'s in our time), many of them don't get the upward mobility they've been led to expect. According to Turchin, in this situation they tend to turn against the current regime and if nothing happens to thwart them, they often cause revolutions. Factors that thwart them include wars that thin their numbers, and opportunities to emigrate to more mobile cultures.
I'm basically resistant to the idea of quantifying such complex issues; I think there's much to be learned from the data, but I'm skeptical of the predictions. My book group and I felt like Turchin left out some key factors from his analysis of the present (such as climate change). I also couldn't help but feel that his rigidity of analysis and expectation was exactly at odds with Graeber and Wengrow's The Dawn of Everything, which I loved precisely because it talks about unpredictability and not relying on a set of by-definition simplistic factors to lead any culture towards some inevitable, or nearly inevitable, conclusion.
And he really shouldn't have been encouraged to include his little fictional examples of individual people and their choices at the beginning of several chapters. He's not a fiction writer, and his hypothesis requires that his characters behave in contrived ways.
Probably worth it for students of complexity theory and historical patterns, but not a favorite of mine.
He's a smart and thoughtful historian and largely a good writer, so the book sometimes feels very convincing. He makes some very important points: in particular, his whole analysis of "counter-elites," basically people who have been led to believe that through education, or military service, or some other means, they will be accepted into the elite class. However, when there are too many of them (think Ph.D.'s in our time), many of them don't get the upward mobility they've been led to expect. According to Turchin, in this situation they tend to turn against the current regime and if nothing happens to thwart them, they often cause revolutions. Factors that thwart them include wars that thin their numbers, and opportunities to emigrate to more mobile cultures.
I'm basically resistant to the idea of quantifying such complex issues; I think there's much to be learned from the data, but I'm skeptical of the predictions. My book group and I felt like Turchin left out some key factors from his analysis of the present (such as climate change). I also couldn't help but feel that his rigidity of analysis and expectation was exactly at odds with Graeber and Wengrow's The Dawn of Everything, which I loved precisely because it talks about unpredictability and not relying on a set of by-definition simplistic factors to lead any culture towards some inevitable, or nearly inevitable, conclusion.
And he really shouldn't have been encouraged to include his little fictional examples of individual people and their choices at the beginning of several chapters. He's not a fiction writer, and his hypothesis requires that his characters behave in contrived ways.
Probably worth it for students of complexity theory and historical patterns, but not a favorite of mine.
June 17, 2023
Interesting historical analysis
I enjoyed it, thought it was academically rigorous and made a lot of sense (as a member of the over produced elites alluded to in the book!)
I enjoyed it, thought it was academically rigorous and made a lot of sense (as a member of the over produced elites alluded to in the book!)
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